POSTUS FREQUENTUS

Twenty

2011-08-05T10:53:00.002-04:00

I know in my head that Ten is almost 20 years old now. I have been talking about it all year. I've even written about it already. But something about this trailer brought it a little too close to home, made me realize that it's not just that it was two decades ago that we first heard this music. It's that the whole thing happened in another time, during an altogether different cultural era.

The on-the-shoulder video cameras. The ironic sport coats. The unironic crowd surfing. Flannel pants and Doc Martens. The grainy footage of boxy sedans traversing a highway with no billboards. And perhaps most of all, Eddie Vedder's signature scream, which I have heard hundreds of times in the past twenty years but which for some reason I heard in this video as if for the first time. (It gave me chills this "first" time too.)

Gen X friends, I sat and watched, agape at the realization that was dawning on me: the world is not ours anymore. Our kids and our friends' kids will look at this footage, should we be foolish enough to show it to them, and they will scoff. They will scoff the same way we did when the Time-Life Sounds of the '70s infomercial would come on TV and our parents would stop flicking channels, lingering for a few moments to watch with unhinged eyes as Mick Jagger or Robert Plant (or, God forbid, whoever sang for ABBA) strutted across the stage ridiculously. They sighed and we snorted into our hands as we looked sideways at each other and it puts a lump in my throat to know that we are most assuredly not laughing anymore.

Soon, if not already, those kids of ours will be freshmen in high school, and they will discover whatever music will speak to them the way grunge spoke to us, and we will pray that it is their era's Pearl Jam, and not Color Me Badd. And after they crawl into bed (why do they have to stay up so late?), we will pull out our dusty DVD copy of Pearl Jam Twenty and hope they will stay asleep and spare us the ignominy of being discovered in the dark wearing our Doc Martens with our plaid pajama pants.

The world is not ours anymore. It is theirs. How did it slip so easily from our grasp?

Recently loved iPhone apps

2011-04-06T19:32:00.003-04:00

Momento
Stunning design and a clean, intuitive interface (I mean seriously, look at those screenshots on their site) highlight this logbook/journal app, a shining example of the quality of work being done on iPhone applications. I purchased this app after reading an inspiring blog post about keeping a logbook. I have never been great at keeping a journal, and I realized that it was partly because I set the bar too high for content and partly because I don't like carrying extra junk around with me. Momento solves both problems: by simply asking me to record "moments," and by existing on my phone.

It also has the bells and whistles you'd expect from a journaling app. You can set it to import your Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/etc. feeds automatically; you can add tags for people, places, events, and things; you can add photos and star ratings; you can search and export. And did I mention how great it looks? But it's not just eye candy; it is great design in the purest sense of the word: form AND function. It's a joy to use.

Camera+
I've recently become re-enamored with Camera+ after not really using it much for a while. If you only buy one photo app, this is the one to get. Aptly named, it extends the functionality of the native camera application, adding a composition grid, stability controls, timer, and separate controls for focus and white balance. It also boasts the best stable of filters available for the price. A bargain at 99 cents.

(Also? If Camera+ hadn't been temporarily banned from the App Store when Instagram was released, I don't think you'd even know what Instagram was. And for pure social photo sharing on the iPhone, I think Path is the most beautiful option out there. I wish more people used it.)

GroupMe
Group texting encased in a nice interface. Once you form a group (easily done by choosing from among your contacts or manually entering numbers), anything anyone sends is seen by everyone in the group. The group gets a dedicated number so anyone with a texting plan can participate, but people with the app, which is also available for Android and Blackberry, can choose to receive push notifications instead of SMS and can see the conversation thread. Messages always show the name of the person who set them. Perfect for groups of people on the go who need to stay in touch.

How old do you feel?

2011-03-31T10:09:00.005-04:00

George W. Bush was sworn into office 10 years ago.

Coldplay's first album was released 11 years ago.

The Matrix hit theaters 12 years ago.

The Department of Justice filed its antitrust case against Microsoft 13 years ago.

Mother Teresa died 14 years ago. Also a princess died.

Kobe Bryant was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, 12 picks after Allen Iverson and one pick after Vitaly Potapenko, 15 years ago.

Bill Watterson stopped drawing Calvin and Hobbes 16 years ago.

Brazil defeated Italy in the FIFA World Cup 17 years ago.

Cheers was cancelled 18 years ago.

Wayne's World was released 19 years ago.

Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana's Nevermind, and U2's Achtung Baby were all released within four weeks of each other. Twenty years ago.

iPads, NASCAR, and Arrogance

2011-03-25T07:13:00.006-04:00

Of all the criticisms tech pundits hurl at people who enjoy Apple products, the laziest and most insulting is that nobody with a brain would buy this stuff if it weren't for Apple's brilliant marketing. This is lazy for the same reason it is insulting: it makes no effort to understand the product's appeal to the people who buy it. The latest example comes from Katherine Noyes in PC World, who explains the iPad's success this way:

Purely marketing, I believe. Apple is nothing if not master of the glitzy sales pitch, and there's never been better proof of that than the iPad's current success… It's a fancy new toy, and--in the case of the iPad--one from Apple, at that. Never underestimate consumers' desire to impress each other with the latest and greatest gadget, especially if they're Apple fans.

Classic. Noyes is aware that Apple sold 15 million iPads in nine months, but because she doesn't personally see the appeal, she constructs a reality in which millions of hard-working people will part with $500, $600, even up to $800 simply because of a slick 30-second TV ad. That's a bold claim. To put it extremely charitably.

Listen, I don't understand NASCAR: I really don't get it on any level. I don't know why people care. I even give my NASCAR friends a hard time about it. "Drive fast, turn left, repeat" and all that. But what I don't do is suggest that the only reason they like it is because some Don Draper type in a Nashville office put a spell on them that makes them want to spend five hours sitting on the couch making "vroom vroom" noises every Sunday.

You know what I did instead? I asked my friend Tim, the biggest NASCAR fan I know, to tell me a little bit about what he sees when he watches a race. It turns out there's a lot more to it than I would have guessed: strategy, technique, engineering, and more. I still don't really care to watch it myself (and yes, I still make the "drive fast turn left" joke occasionally), but I learned a little something about NASCAR. And more importantly, I learned a little something about culture and about my friend Tim.

And not to turn this into a sermon, but this actually does contain a lesson that we could all stand to learn. It's a lesson about humility. There's something in all of us that wants to assume that anyone who sees things differently than we do must be under some kind of spell: that Apple fans are all unwitting victims of Steve Jobs's marketing acumen, that your buddy's girlfriend doesn't really love him and is playing him for a fool, or that people who believe in a particular doctrine have surrendered their minds (and souls) to nefarious religious propaganda.

And it's not just lazy and insulting to think about people this way. It's also deeply arrogant. It comes from an assumption that you are always right about everything. This is quite unlikely, you know. It leads to arguments and bitterness in your relationships, frustration in the workplace, and alienation from God. So the next time you find a person or group of people who disagree with you, try to understand why they think they're right instead of coming up with some explanation for why they're wrong. But be careful, because you might end up changing your mind.

Or worse, buying an iPad.

The worst kind of blog post

2011-03-19T22:44:00.003-04:00

No one wants to read a blog post that begins with "Wow, it's been a really long time since I wrote anything here!" But it has been. Eight months, to be exact. And the truth is, everything in the world that matters most to me has changed quite a lot since then. Most notably, my wife Tracey has been carrying a new baby for that length of time. And so in a week or two (please not three or four), my life will be even more markedly different.

I don't know why I'm writing this, other than that I'm tired of not writing. And I don't really anticipate that I'll be able to do it with any more regularity over the next year than I did over the past year.

I guess I'll leave you with an old favorite of mine, a list of Ten Second Thoughts.

1. Cannonball Adderly was great. I don't think he gets enough appreciation from jazz lovers.

2. It's much better to do a small thing than to do nothing at all.

3. Internet commenters make me genuinely sad.

4. I'm still not sure I've grasped the idea that I can't do everything I want to do, that my options are finite. But I'm getting closer.

5. I'm looking forward to a nice cup of coffee in the morning.

My farewell address to Jason and his family

2010-07-25T22:35:00.006-04:00

After church today, we held a big celebration for my longtime friend and colleague, Jason Condon, who has accepted a position as the Associate Superintendent and Director of Church Planting for the East Coast Conference of our denomination. These are the remarks I made as we concluded the event, along with the photos from my presentation slides.

* * * * * * * * * *

My story with Jason goes back more than 17 years, when I was a 15-year old high school student in southern Maine. My dad, who was on the church committee conducting a search for a new youth pastor, came home and said to me, “Scott, I think you’re going to like the guy we hired tonight. He has a full beard and hair down to the middle of his back.” Oh, and do I ever wish I had a photograph of that haircut to show you.

Oh wait! I do.

Spectacular mullet and all, Jason became my youth pastor during two of my most formative years. It was under his ministry that I learned that everyone had a vital role to play in the life of the church community: I learned about service. It was also during his ministry that I first sensed a calling to a pastoral ministry of my own.

So when Jason let us know during my senior year that he was moving to Rochester to pursue something that I had never heard of called “church planting,” I was pretty disappointed. I guess I let myself go a little bit.

But I pulled out of that funk in time to apply to colleges. I soon narrowed it down to two colleges: a New England university where I would accept a scholarship in saxophone performance, or a small Christian college in Rochester, where I would pursue a degree in Christian ministry.

Of course my friends at the youth group gave me a hard time and said I chose Rochester because I was “following” Jason there. This was really annoying to me, because I had not chosen Roberts Wesleyan so I could go be close to Jason. But when I look back on it, I was following him, in a way. I was not following him to a city, but I was following the example he had set of listening to a calling and acting accordingly.

Toward the end of my college career, I began volunteering as a worship leader in the church that Jason had started a couple years earlier, New Vision Community Church. Around the same time, I began to entertain the notion of working at a church plant of my own, this one in Las Vegas. And so not long after my graduation from college, I “followed” Jason again—and this time it was much clearer that the following was one of vocation and faithful obedience rather than geography.

Well, you’ve heard my stories about how Las Vegas worked out. I won’t repeat them now, except to say that in the summer of 2001—almost exactly nine years ago, which I can barely believe—I moved back to Rochester with Tracey, disenchanted with church and intent on getting the heck out of pastoral ministry.

But by this time, Jason was on to new and different things, serving at a ministry that was starting to look dangerously like a church, albeit a church unlike any I had ever been a part of. And before I knew it, I was working alongside him for the third time in my life. Most of you know that this time, it has stuck for nearly a decade, as that ministry eventually ended up here at Artisan Church.

So I’ve known Jason for an awful long time. And it hasn’t just been church-related. We’ve played together…

(And here I would draw your attention away from my C3PO posture and plaid-on-plaid ensemble, and toward Jason’s neon green tank top and 21st century mullet.)

And we’ve raised our families right next door to each other.

This is me with Jaron, before Bryn was even an idea, and before Abel was even a biological possibility. Over the years, there have been hundreds of moments like this one, with one of us holding the other’s kid, or better yet, with the kids all playing together. My family and Jason’s family? We’ve really and truly lived life together for almost this entire millennium. (I mean, it’s only 2010, but still.)

Lisa was the one we called when Abel had been crying for three hours straight and we didn’t know what to do—was he broken? Jason was the one I called when I needed advice on refrigerator repair. And I was the one who Bryn came to at age 2 when she desperately, and I mean desperately needed a diaper change at 10 in the morning and her whole household was still asleep.

So you can see that when Jason and his family move to Connecticut, I will be losing a lot more than a colleague.

And yet, I believe this is absolutely the right role for Jason. It’s a job that fits him so well. One thing that we’ve definitely noticed over the years is that even as we’ve worked so closely, we have developed ministry styles and approaches that are quite distinct. And as Jason moves into a new position that fits his unique calling and personality perfectly, I adjust my role here in a way that fits me perfectly. So I guess you could say that as Jason and I part ways as pastors, I’ll keep on following his example: service and obedience to my calling. So from me and my family, and on behalf of our whole congregation, I say to all four of you: Jason, Lisa, Jaron, and Bryn, thank you, and we love you.

* * * * * * * * * *

(Oh, and congrats on the new job.)

The good and bad of the iPhone 4 bumper

2010-07-07T19:34:00.004-04:00

When Apple released the iPhone 4, they also released a proprietary case for the phone. They call it a bumper. It is basically a stiff band of plastic and rubber that form-fits around the edge of the phone. It's priced (for now, anyway) at $29. I bought one. Here are my thoughts after one day:

The Good:

It's about as unobtrusive as any iPhone case could possibly be. Doesn't affect pocketability, unlike just about every other case I've ever used or seen.

If you buy it in black, it's mostly invisible.

The button caps they built into it are really nice: the volume up/down and sleep buttons feel and work exactly like the actual buttons on the iPhone. (But see below for warnings about the vibrate toggle button and the dock connector.)

The case is very likely to protect the glass (front AND back now, mind you) on drops. I'm skittish about this since I broke the glass screen on my iPhone 3G—granted, it was on the 50th drop or so, but still.

It will definitely protect the metal edges, which are also the antennae, from scratches.

It allegedly alleviates the reception problem that some users experience when bridging the gap in the frame/antenna. I can't test this easily because I hardly ever see the problem, but the science of it makes perfect sense.

The material of the case makes it grippy against both leather and fabric, so it's safe(r) to set the phone on the arm of your couch. (Previous iPhones were spectacular on leather and "oh crap no!" on fabric. The iPhone 4, naked, is iffy even on leather.)

The Bad:

Unlike the other buttons, the vibrate/toggle button is accessed through a hole in the case. I don't know any way around this, but it's buried so deep in there that you have to get your finger at nearly 90° to the phone in order to flick the button. It's impossible to turn silent mode on or off without taking it out of your pocket. Since I want to do this about ten times a day, I find it nearly a deal breaker.

Whereas the iPhone 4 itself is pretty much impervious to dust, the case will catch dust and hair and stuff. Cleaned out easily enough by removing it and giving it the old "Blades of Steel" treatment, but a bit annoying.

The 30-pin dock connector (a.k.a. "where you plug it in at the bottom") is accessed through a recessed hole in the case. Works flawlessly with Apple's cables, but the Belkin charge cable that I use in my car doesn't fit through the hole, so I'll have to bring an Apple cable along with me. Other third-party accessories may present more or less of this same problem.

Even with its minimalism, this case does change the look and feel of the iPhone 4. When I take it off to clean out the dust, I always think to myself, Oh man this thing looks so cool without that case, and it feels better in the hand too. So far, I've contained my vanity and put the bumper back on after a few minutes.

The Overall Rating:

Somewhere between "Recommended" and "I'm Going to Return It." If you have serious reception issues, it's definitely worth the money. If you are on the fence about a case at all, or if you need a case but can tolerate a bulkier solution, it's probably not. I'm sort of in the middle, so I'll keep it for now.

iPhone 4 mini-review

2010-06-24T09:33:00.003-04:00

After rolling with the new iPhone 4 for a day now, I am very impressed. Here are the most noteworthy new features, in the order I noticed them.

That screen

Oh, that glorious screen. Everything you've heard about how crisp the text looks is true. There's not much more to say—it's marvelous.

Speed

The iPhone 4 is fast, and I mean fast. This is especially noticeable for me, because I upgraded from the two-year old iPhone 3G. But it also outstrips Tracey's iPhone 3GS. This thing is the Firebolt of phones.

Two examples: Plants vs. Zombies, which I estimate at about a 40-second launch time on the 3G, is ready to roll in less than five seconds. And the process of syncing large quantities of data to the phone is also very zippy. I can't quantify this, but it seems that the bottleneck on that process was less about USB 2.0 and more about the iPhone 3G's ability to write to its hard drive. I was very surprised at how quickly the iPhone 4 was ready to roll after starting the restore from my backup yesterday.

Camera

The new camera is astounding. Not only does it benefit greatly from the speed boost on the phone, but the improved optics and the flash make it a legitimate camera for the first time. I don't own a point-and-shoot camera because when I bought my DSLR I never wanted to shoot with anything else, but having a serious camera on the iPhone will mean I can capture a lot of great images without having to plan to go shoot. I'm excited to see what I'll be able to do with this camera combined with my two favorite photography apps, Camera+ and CameraBag.

Fast App Switching

This is a function of the new version of the iPhone's operating system rather than the new hardware, but it definitely takes the entire experience up a few notches. The ability to leave a game to answer a text message and then return to it just as you left it almost makes up for the iPhone's lousy notification system. It's definitely a game-changing feature.

Summary

These are obviously just my first observations, tossed out in about 25 minutes. So far, I am absolutely pleased with the iPhone 4. It's unquestionably worth the upgrade price if you're on the 3G, and probably worthwhile for many or most 3GS users as well.

What's in a name?

2010-06-11T14:41:00.002-04:00

With everyone swooning over iPhone 4—rightly so, in my opinion; I'll be pre-ordering on June 15, don't you worry—there's something I haven't seen anyone spend much time talking about. Apple changed the name of their mobile OS from "iPhone OS" to "iOS." Most people who comment on the change say simply that it makes sense, because the OS has expanded beyond the iPhone: first to the iPod touch, and more recently to the iPad.

This is true, but it misses a gigantic point.

The "i" prefix is THE Apple identifier. Not just for their mobile division: for the whole company since Steve Jobs's return as CEO in 1997. They burst back on the scene with the iMac. You had the iBook (the laptop, not the iBooks application). Before its official launch, the TV was going to be the iTV. Every idiot blogger who wants to make fun of Apple fans calls them iFans or iTards or i-Whatevers. When the iPhone launched, there was some question as to whether Apple would make the legal effort required to secure the name "iPhone," since it was the obvious choice but Cisco owned the name. The iPrefix is a clear and obvious way to say, "This product is made by Apple."

So when they change their mobile operating system's name to "iOS," what does that tell us? If you ask me, it tells us that Apple sees their future as wrapped up in these devices. When they say things like "This is changing the way we use computers," it's not empty marketing spin. They really believe it.

Whether or not you agree.

Dunn's

2010-05-20T11:37:00.002-04:00

It's been a decades-long tradition in my family that we spend a week at Dunn's Camps in Oxford, ME every summer. I have deep memories of Hogan Pond and the dirt roads and the cabins and the ice cream and all the rest of it. It's been fun to see Abel begin to build some of his own memories of this place that's so rooted in the Austin consciousness. I was looking through some photos of Dunn's last night, and I came up with a few that I decided to post here.

Turn Your Pretty Name Around

2010-04-07T12:35:00.002-04:00

If you don't like this, then meet me by the swings at 3:15, because I want to fight you.

Update on the pedal

2010-02-09T20:55:00.005-05:00

I started to work on the guts last night and was able to accomplish most of the soldering in an hour or so with my friend Matt, who is much more experienced with this kind of thing and also has a basement full of a zillion cool nerd-toys that make the job easier—a nice soldering iron and space age wire strippers and the like.

Then today, I started applying the clearcoat lacquer to the enclosure. Three mist coats 30 minutes apart had it looking very nice and shiny, with the added benefit of obscuring the edges of the decal film. After a 24-hour drying period, I'll sand it with very fine sandpaper and apply additional coats of lacquer.

I set out to finish the wiring tonight, but no sooner was the iron hot than I realized I would need to start screwing pieces into the enclosure, which as I've just told you is not finished yet. So I had to stop for now. Bummer—it's a lot of fun. I'm already thinking about my next build!

Before I sprayed on the lacquer, I placed the knobs, LED, and footswitch loosely into position and snapped a quick photo with the circuit board next to it. It's looking great. I can't wait to see and hear the finished product!

(This photo can be enlarged to see the nerdiness up close; just click on it.)

My tremolo pedal

2010-02-03T22:54:00.003-05:00

My mom got me a great Christmas gift this year: a tremolo pedal kit from Build Your Own Clone, a company that supplies idiots like me with a bunch of electronic components that, when soldered together properly, make really nice guitar effects pedals.

I haven't gotten to the soldering part yet, but I've been having fun turning the enclosure from a boring bare metal box into something that I would be proud to have on my pedalboard. First, I primed it with some Rust-Oleum, then put three coats of yellow Rust-Oleum spray paint on it. Then it was on to the design phase.

I spent a little bit of time mocking up the pedal in Pages (which is solid as a basic design/layout application, if you're wondering). After I was satisfied with the design, I had some decals printed. Originally, I had planned on purchasing some waterslide decal paper suitable for use in my inkjet printer, but as luck would have it, I saw an ad on a nerdy guitar player forum for professional quality waterslide decal printing. This seemed like a much better option than the inkjet version. I submitted my design, and the decals arrived from the UK today.

After Abel went to bed, I put the decals on my yellow box. I didn't do a perfect job; it's a little tricky getting the decals off the backing and onto the surface, so the alignment is imperfect. But overall, I am quite happy with the results. I'll post again during the soldering phase, and again when it's all finished.

Flippin' sweet

2010-01-12T19:39:00.006-05:00

Late last year, I decided I wanted to try to expand on my guitar playing hobby and see if I could turn it into a little bit of a money-making venture by buying and reselling guitars and guitar gear. I was not under the illusion that I could get rich or quit my day job doing this, but scanning the local Craigslist musical instrument classifieds day after day had planted the idea in my head that it might be possible to make a few bucks here and there.

Because as it turns out, most of the people who are selling stuff on Craigslist are not very smart. They take lousy pictures with cell phone cameras, they can't manage to describe their items in any detail, they sell stuff without cleaning it first, and they don't have a very strong command of written English with all its crazy capital letters and periods. My theory was that since I take pretty good photos and can string a few words together (and let's face it, my problem is that I don't stop at a few), I might be able to buy stuff under market value and sell it at market value. And along the way, I would be able to demo all kinds of guitars and effects that I couldn't otherwise afford.

So I talked with Tracey about it, and she agreed to let me take $200 out of our budget one month to start this up. That was the most I could spend on my first buy, and it turned out to be just enough. I bought an imported Telecaster from a college student who needed to pay his parking tickets before the school would let him return to classes, and I was on my way.

That was about six or seven deals ago, and I have just about doubled my money, having a whole lot of fun along the way. There's something I enjoy about getting a guitar that's been collecting someone's bedroom dust for a year, cleaning it up, adjusting the action, and getting it ready for sale. It's sort of cathartic to take these dirty things and make them clean, and in the process increase their value by 20–30%.

I'm now at the point where I can have more than one deal going at once, which adds some flexibility to my buying patterns. And as an added bonus, I very often get lots of little accessories out of these deals. For example, that Telecaster I bought came in a nice case. I was able to put one of my own guitars in that case and still sell the Telecaster for a profit. I also get lots of cables and tuners and straps and things like that. None of these items affects a guitar's resale value in any appreciable way, so I keep them for my own use.

Here are a few tips for selling stuff on Craigslist:

1. Take a decent photo. Borrow a real camera if you don't have one. Turn the flash off and shoot the item in natural light.

2. Write complete sentences that don't make you sound like a jerk I wouldn't want to talk to. Seriously, I have no idea why this is so hard.

3. Accept email. Duh? It's the Internet. I can't believe how many people post to Craigslist specifying that they only deal by phone.

A few photos of the items I've flipped:

Reviewing "The Book of Basketball"

2009-12-05T09:24:00.005-05:00

I've just completed Bill Simmons's 700+ page tome, plainly titled The Book of Basketball, and I thought it might be fun to review it.

But let's get something out of the way first. You need to know at the outset that nothing written in this book can be taken seriously in light of a footnote on page 555, in which Simmons lists his "Mount Rushmore" of fast-food restaurants: "Chik-fil-a, Subway, Panda Express, and Arby's. In-N-Out would have made it if their fries didn't suck."

Is he serious? Arby's? Taking the burger slot on Mount Rushmore ahead of In-N-Out? That Arby's? (Michael Bluth might say, "Her?") The place that sells sweaty roast beef sandwiches? The eatery whose signature condiment is named after a "horsey"?

I can't begin to describe how poor a decision this is. This is a restaurant that until very recently would give you five sandwiches for five dollars and be happy to get the five dollars. In-N-Out is an icon; Arby's is an also-ran. If you told me I had two options, with option one being paying $20 to eat a double-double Animal burger from In-N-Out and option two being you paying me $10 to eat any sandwich from Arby's, I would choose option one a hundred times out of a hundred.

Not only is Arby's not better than In-N-Out; it's not even better than McDonald's—which is third among national chains behind Wendy's and Burger King. In fact, Arby's isn't even better than Jack in the Box (a.k.a. "E. Coli in the Box") or Carl's Jr. I'd rather eat at Roy Rogers than at Arby's. I'm incredulous.

To put this in basketball terms, it would be like saying you'd rather have Juwan Howard than Tim Duncan. Worse: this would be like making an all-time starting five and choosing Shawn Bradley as your center. Arby's is a one-tool player, only the one tool is winning jump balls (curly fries). Sure, that's great, no one's arguing your'e the best at that, but you're not winning games that way. In-N-Out could never win a jump ball (their fries are marginally disappointing), but they're scoring 45 a game in the playoffs.

Actually, you know what? I'm not even going to review the rest of the book, which I enjoyed, because that footnote was so disconcerting.

That's more like it

2009-12-02T16:43:00.005-05:00

"It was a dud, plain and simple. Better luck next time, assuming there is a next time."

—Me, in my concert review after seeing Phish at Darien Lake in August.

Well, there was a next time, and the luck was most definitely better. I saw Phish again on November 29, and it was possibly the best show I've ever been to. This one was in Syracuse at the War Memorial at Oncenter, a minor league hockey rink with only 6,700 seats. It was by by far the smallest venue I've ever seen Phish in, and the intensity was off the charts. The band was super tight, the light show (aided by the small room with a shiny roof) was superb, and the setlist was relentless. Phish's "From the Road" entry has the setlist and several photos.

My main criticism after the Darien show was that the mix was terrible: Trey's guitar was piercingly loud, the drums were inconsistently present, and the keys were either EQed poorly or lacking altogether. The mix in Syracuse was spot-on. I could hear everything really well, and even when Trey stacked his overdrives and hit his wah, it was just loud—not painful. As a bonus, Page was using the Hammond a TON, which gave it a very Rift-era feel.

My other problem in August was that the band never seemed to get into a groove, and again, the Syracuse show was the polar opposite. The first set in particular seemed to go on forever, like they were having so much fun that they didn't want to stop. And they stayed tight right up until the very end, when they came out and kicked Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" right in the teeth. All in all, a great night—the most fun I've had in ages.

Here's to a nice long run with Phish 3.0!

Flannel

2009-11-18T17:06:00.007-05:00

We're in the middle of a really great series at Artisan Church. It's called "Flannelgraph: The Old Testament Story, Less Fuzzy," and we're making a new gigantic 4'x8' flannelgraph board each week. (Details here.) Now if you don't know what a flannelgraph is, well, God bless you. But if you grew up in the church as I did, this fuzzy didactic tool needs no introduction; you have plenty of memories—fond or otherwise—of your Sunday School teacher using it to imprint the stories and characters of the Bible into your brain. And it probably worked!

To an extent.

Because if you are anything like me, you may have ended up with a fairly strong knowledge of the stories, but not much understanding of the narrative. I often joke that when I was a kid, I just assumed that Abraham lived down the street from Peter and James, and sometimes they'd get together with Noah and Jesus, who brought Zaccheus to dinner once in a while. Like some biblical Sesame Street.

So it's somewhat ironic that one of the purposes of this Flannelgraph series is to give our people a better knowledge of the entire Old Testament story. In four weeks, we are telling the whole story, from creation through the divided kingdom and exile of Israel—all in preparation for the season of Advent, which begins on the final Sunday of the Flannelgraph series.

Because it's not okay for people of faith to be ignorant of their own story.

Meanwhile, Abel has really been into it, and we've made it a school project to make his own flannelgraph. Not one with biblical characters, at least not yet. Just little felt people playing baseball under a sky that is alternately sunny and cloudy. We've even talked about making flannelgraphs for his cousins for Christmas, which would be awesome low-cost "relational gifts."

So if you're in Rochester, it's not too late to get in on the story: come and join us for the final two weeks of the series. And if you're not, maybe consider building your own flannelgraph. It's easy and affordable; all you need is felt and some glue. It's a great way to help kids and grown-ups alike get creative and immerse themselves in the stories that matter.

Just don't forget about the narrative.

Edited to add: Those wavy lines in the ground on the right? They're totally quicksand.

More fun with CameraBag

2009-10-10T19:10:00.005-04:00

I should probably write down the filters I use, but I never remember to. Here are two more subjects, each with two different filters. You can click to enlarge the images. These photos were shot with my Canon Rebel XT and a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens.

Stacie and Dante:

Anna and Elliot:

CameraBag follows Tweetie to the desktop

2009-10-07T00:03:00.003-04:00

One angle that is rarely mentioned in the debates about the App Store is the potential for developers of popular iPhone apps to go cross-platform and create an additional revenue stream with more expensive desktop versions. The most obvious example is Tweetie, a wildly successful Twitter application that debuted on the iPhone with a price of $2.99 and soon appeared on the desktop as well, where users have a choice of paying $19.95 or using a "free" ad-supported version.

The latest developer to wade into the desktop waters is NeverCenter, makers of the useful photo-filter app CameraBag. CameraBag, which taps into the iPhone's camera function and offers users a choice of filters designed to mimic the results of popular vintage film cameras, sells for $1.99 on the App Store. But the recently-released desktop version costs $19.

Unlike the desktop version of Tweetie, however, CameraBag for Mac offers significantly greater functionality and usability than its iPhone counterpart. In addition to a vastly larger display on which to view and edit your photos, the desktop version allows for quicker application and layering of filters, simple drop-menus for adjusting the borders, cropping, and output size, as well a "reprocess" feature that allows for nearly endless tinkering and fine-tuning. The Mac version of CameraBag really shines, and I was happy to fork over $20 for it. In contrast, I've only ever used the ad-supported version of Tweetie for Mac.

In a sense, the inexpensive iPhone version of CameraBag served as a very effective demo for the more lucrative Mac version. This move from mobile to desktop software is clearly more suited to some apps than others, but it should be interesting to see how this trend develops as the App Store grows in popularity and reach.

Here are a few photos I edited using CameraBag for Mac. (I posted some photos from the iPhone version in the previous post.)

iPhone photography

2009-09-24T22:38:00.002-04:00

Lately I've been inspired by Chase Jarvis's photography motto, "The best camera is the one that is with you." Today I was on a walk with my family, and I felt like taking a few photos with my iPhone. I used the CameraBag iPhone application to apply some filters to the shots. I ended up getting a few good ones.

Tips on driving in Ireland

2009-09-17T12:20:00.005-04:00

Driving in Ireland can be stressful. Trust me, I just got back. There's not really any way to avoid the stress, but it is worth it: when you drive, you control your own destinations and timetables, and you can see plenty of the magnificent countryside in just a week or ten days. Here are a few tips to make your life easier.

1. Use a GPS. Just trust me on this, okay? Here's what a street sign looks like in Dublin:

See anything? Neither did I. But if you have GPS, it doesn't matter, because it will tell you where to turn with a nice visualization of the street layout as your go. In actuality, about every fifth street in Dublin is marked with a sign, but they're small, low contrast affairs that are screwed into the sides of the buildings on the corner. And if you plan to travel the country roads (for example, on your way to your B&Bs), you're completely out of luck.

I can't stress it enough: get the GPS. You can add it on to your rental package for about €10/day, but a much cheaper solution is to purchase the Ireland maps for the GPS already own. For my Garmin GPS, the SD card cost me $80 used on eBay, and I intend to recoup almost 100% of that cost by reselling it.

2. Tight to the left, wide to the right. Repeat this mantra every time you turn. Once you're driving straight ahead, it's easier to manage, but those turns are real nailbiters. Remember "tight left, wide right" and you'll avoid ending up on the wrong side of the street staring down an oncoming farm tractor.

3. It's not just about which lane you're in. Other things to consider: You merge onto highways to your right. Slower traffic keeps to the left, and you pass on the right. You pull over to the left when you want to look at your travel book or let someone by. You must yield to oncoming traffic when turning right, but you needn't bother when turning left.

And perhaps most importantly, your body is on the right side of the vehicle. This matters—a lot—when you are traveling on Ireland's famous narrow country roads. Your instinct will be that the entire width of the car is to your right and that it will be clipped by oncoming traffic, so you'll pull way over to the left and scratch your passenger door on the enormous thorn bushes. You can get a lot closer than is comfortable and still not get hit by that Beamer rushing toward you.

4. Roundabouts. Oh, the roundabouts. They're everywhere in Ireland. Once you get used to them, you'll wonder why they're not everywhere in the US, too—they sure beat waiting at red lights. The trick is simply to remember that when you're entering the roundabout, you must yield to the traffic that's already in it. The GPS comes in handy here as well, because it tells you which exit to take once you're in. The best part about the roundabouts is if you're unsure about which way to go, you can drive around and around and around as many times as it takes to decide. Just don't get too dizzy, or you'll forget tip #2.

5. Remember the people are Irish. It's not the Bronx. They're nice. There is almost no road rage on the Emerald Isle; I think I heard one horn in the ten days we were there. Don't worry that someone is going to scream at you if you make a mistake. Unless it's your spouse.

But if I had any tips to help you with that, I'd be rich.

Debt is dumb; cash is king

2009-08-17T09:32:00.003-04:00

...and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.

So says Dave Ramsey, whose books, radio show podcast, and financial course have honestly and truly changed our life over the past few months, in spite of the fact that I am probably an unlikely candidate for his particular brand of teaching. (He's very southern, conservative, and proudly unsophisticated.)

It started in late April, when I got a free copy of his latest book at a conference the Artisan staff attended in Florida. As I read it on the plane ride home, I could feel my perspective changing. You know how that happens sometimes, right? You encounter a new idea or concept, and you know almost immediately that something in your life will never quite be the same, because there's no un-learning this lesson.

Debt is Dumb

The lesson I can't unlearn is basically that debt is bad for you. Those colossal student loans? Bad. Credit cards with 0% interest that allow me to buy stuff I can't really afford without very much risk? Bad. Car loans (which, thankfully, we do not have anymore)? Really bad. All kinds of money going into our bank account already marked with someone else's name on it? Unacceptable.

So Dave Ramsey recommends that people get seriously intense about paying off their debts in order to free up their best wealth-building tool: their incomes. And the first step to that is making and following a budget. Now, we've made budgets in the Austin household before. But never, and I mean never ever, have we followed one. I'd set up the spending categories based on our actual spending over the previous several months, trying to reduce the bloated ones so as to have more money available. But with a few dozen quick swipes of the debit card, that budget would be obliterated within the first month.

Cash is King

And here's where it gets pretty wacky. For the past four months, we have had unprecedented success following our budget as a result of making one simple change in our financial lives: we now pay cash. For almost everything that isn't automatically paid via a bank draft. Whereas we used to use our debit cards for everything from the grocery store to the post office, we now set aside a certain amount of cash for every category at the beginning of every month, and we put the bills into an envelope. When the cash is gone, the category is done. Period.

This simple change has reduced our discretionary spending by nearly a thousand dollars per month. Guess where that money goes? Well, since we've already cleared all our credit card debt, it goes straight onto the principal of Tracey's student loan, which is almost gone. Then it will be on to my gigantic student loan debt. And after that, the rental property mortgage. And then our mortgage. Our plan is to be completely debt free before Abel hits double digits.

In the meantime, absolutely no borrowing more money, for any reason. When our car was totaled, we paid cash on top of our insurance check to replace it. When we can't afford something, we save toward it. We cut up our credit cards, and we'll never see the inside of a mortgage broker's office again—and if you know my ambitions with respect to real estate, you know that last one hurts me the most. But really, it doesn't hurt. When we get around to buying our next property, we'll pay—you guessed it—cash.

Quick review of Phish at Darien Lake

2009-08-14T10:09:00.007-04:00

"But I don't think our fans do happily lap it up [when Phish plays badly]. I think what happens is they get on the Internet, and talk about how it was a bad show."

—Trey Anastasio, in the 2000 film Bittersweet Motel

Well, here I am to talk about it on the Internet. I went to my first Phish show in five years last night, and it was unquestionably the worst of the six or eight I've seen over the years. For me, it was still a really great time, and I'm very glad I went. I was disappointed that the three first-timers I brought with me had what I know to be a subpar experience.

And just to head off what I know will be the first criticism, let me say this: I saw Phish pre-hiatus and post-hiatus, and I liked both. I saw them in late 1997, a period during which they are generally understood to have been at their peak, and I saw them at the very end of their 2004 run, when they are generally understood to have been mailing it in. I liked both eras—a lot. So I'm not one of those whiny "Things ain't what they used to be" fans. This show was a genuine dud for a couple of reasons.

The major issue was the sound. I do not know how much of this to attribute to the fact that Darien Lake Performing Arts Center is a notoriously bad-sounding venue, or how much blame Phish's new sound tech should get: let's just say you could find people complaining about both with a quick Google search. Either way, Trey's guitar was piercingly loud—often to the point of physical pain. Page's piano sounded as if it had been EQed by someone who was underwater; meanwhile, his organ was barely distinguishable. The drums alternated between impossible to hear and thumpy with no high end. Changing our spot on the lawn helped some of these issues, but it was never good enough to cease being a distraction.

And on top of the sound, the band really seemed off. The setlist included an unusually high number of Phish staples, but it felt like they could never get into a rhythm. Just when they settled into something ("Possum"), they would follow it with a complete whiff ("Farmhouse," which I would say was probably the single worst performance I've ever heard at a Phish show).

There were moments of sheer brilliance. I was completely lost in the music in parts of "Wolfman's Brother," and it was a particularly smoking "David Bowie." The "Darien Center Jam" was pretty solid, and "Antelope" was quite nice. The problem was that there was no sustained rhythm to the whole thing, and let me stress again that the sound was so poor as to be a constant distraction.

During the Yankees' heyday in the late '90s, Joe Torre once said of an injured David Cone that 75% of Coney is usually still going to be better than 100% of the other guy. This is true of Phish. The show was still a blast, and a worthwhile experience. I don't think they've "jumped the shark" or sold out or lost their touch. This was not like seeing DMB on the Everyday tour—nothing to make me want to swear them off. It was a dud, plain and simple. Better luck next time, assuming there is a next time.

[Update: I saw them again in November, and they were spectaular. Read that review here.]

iPhone apps

2009-08-07T12:35:00.004-04:00

Since I have a few friends who have recently gotten iPhones or iPods, I figured I'd toss up a lightning-quick list of applications to consider. I've put them into four groups for easy evaluation. At some point, I may come back and add links to the iTunes store. but probably not, so don't get your hopes up.

Apps I Use Every Single Day

Tweetie
Facebook
MLB.com At Bat 2009

Games That Are Worth the Money*

Frenzic
Flight Control
Fieldrunners
Rolando

Free Apps I Really Thought I'd Use But I Don't

Evernote
Instapaper
Box.net
Air Sharing
Handshake

The Best App For Distracting A Crying Toddler, Which I Think You'll Agree Makes It Well Worth A Buck

Koi Pond

*Seriously, let's not have any complaining about five dollars for a fun application. You spend that on a hamburger, which I will remind you "disappears" within 36 hours.

Why we homeschool

2009-07-21T16:41:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wish I could wear Tony Woodlief's great article "Why Some Kids Aren’t Heading to School Today" on a sign around my neck:

"Given preconceptions about this practice, I should note that we are not anti-government wingnuts living on a compound. We like literature, and nice wines, and Celeste would stab me in the heart with a spoon if I gave her one of those head bonnets the Amish women wear. We are not, in other words, stereotypical home-schooling parents. But neither are most actual home-schooling parents."

There's a saying nerds often use when linking to something from their blogs: "Read the entire article." Do it.

Listen to these songs

2009-06-27T20:38:00.002-04:00

Here are some music recommendations for your weekend.

"Goodnite" by Melody Gardot: A dreamy jazz ballad from Gardot, whose voice is smooth like glass.

"Long Lost Brother" by Over the Rhine: A primo track from OTR's magnum opus. "I wanna do better, I wanna try harder / I wanna believe down to the letter / Jesus and Mary, can you carry us / Across this ocean into the arms of forgiveness."

"Light Up Ya Lighter" by Michael Franti: Rough, blistering reggae critique of the war and more importantly, the culture of war. I'm not really into anti-war songs, but this one happens to move me. Plus it has an awesome hook.

"O Heart Bereaved and Lonely" by Sandra McCracken: This is a haunting acoustic reworking of an old Fanny Crosby hymn. "O cling to thy Redeemer, / Thy Savior, Brother, Friend / Believe and trust His promise, / To keep you till the end." Such a comforting song.

And finally, two Phish songs. People often ask me where to start with Phish, so here are two recommendations. "Down With Disease" is a great example of a fairly short, concise song that still showcases a lot of the band's sound. And "You Enjoy Myself" is maybe my favorite example of the more stereotypical Phish song: long, heavily composed, time changes, goofy lyrics. It's pretty boss.

Satchmo getting big

2009-06-08T11:24:00.001-04:00

His mouth is now big enough to carry two tennis balls at once.

See ya later!

More doggie tips

2009-06-03T14:27:00.002-04:00

Our obedience class trainer, Bob Minchella, teaches owners a consistent process of issuing commands that has been really helpful for us. I'm recounting it here, not because I expect anyone to memorize it and apply it (though I know some of you will), but because I think it is an interesting window into a dog's brain. Here's the process, which we follow every time, for recall (a.k.a., "Come!").

1. Give the command: "Satchmo, come!" Come is a position, seated and facing me. Running toward me, and then past me, does not count.

2. As soon as his butt hits the ground at my feet, "mark" the behavior. This means, essentially, say "Good boy!" The theory here is that you can't consistently give a reward with the correct timing, so you mark the behavior with your voice instead.

3. Reward! As Bob says, "with a treat the first bazillion times." As I consistently mark behavior with my voice and follow the mark with a reward, the puppy's little brain begins to associate the two, and after a while, I can phase out the treats.

4. Wait a few seconds. The dog needs to hold his position after the reward is issued. No fair sprinting off with that piece of hot dog!

5. Release. Say, "Okay!" Only then can he get up. If he gets up before he's released, he gets a voice warning ("Ah!") and/or a correction with the leash.

Nifty, huh?

I love these hands

2009-05-27T19:28:00.001-04:00

Making Pie 5
Originally uploaded by sjaustin

And woman they're attached to.

(...and the pie she makes.)

On cargo shorts

2009-05-27T13:11:00.002-04:00

Cargo shorts: they're a staple of summer. From frat boys to farmers, everyone loves the casual utilitarian style only cargo shorts can provide. So you'd think that by now, someone would have perfected their design. But as far as I have been able to tell, no one ever has. I'm not a clothing designer, but I am highly opinionated, and I do have legs—so I feel qualified to write about this topic. Here is how some designer could create the perfect cargo short; I offer this free of charge as a service to society.

Cargo Pockets

The heart and soul of the cargo short are its cargo pockets, obviously. The ideal pocket should be roomy but not bulky, secure but easily accessible. Most often it is the issue of accessibility that clothiers muck up. Repeat after me: buttons are a bad idea. If it takes two hands to open, you've failed. My first choice would be velcro, but snaps are also acceptable. Either way, you'll want two anchor points (rather than one in the center of the pocket flap) for added security.

Belt Loops

It's casual summer attire, so you probably aren't going to want a belt, but you still need to have belt loops. Why? Because it's also utility attire, so you ought to be able to clip in your keys. And since you're going to sew some belt loops on them, you might as well make the loops wide enough to fit a belt through. You know, on the off chance someone wants to go d-bag casual and slap a belt on. Bonus points here for a drawstring on the inside of the shorts.

Fit

Crotch: Tight-crotched low-rise jeans are one thing; I guess they're okay, if you are the type of guy who wants to go troll for the type of girl who likes guys who dress like women. But again: cargo shorts are casual wear—they should fit loosely and comfortably.

Length: Here's a simple rule: make the legs long enough so I don't look like a geometry teacher in line for Space Mountain. The hem of the shorts ought to flirt with the top of the knees, okay?

Front Pockets

Loose and deep. Not only should you be able to fit your hands in comfortably, but you ought to be able to hop in the car without fear of dropping all your change down into driver's seat no-man's-land.

Rear Pockets

These are a bonus feature. You're probably sticking your wallet in one of the cargo pockets, but sometimes you'll want a place to keep a napkin while you eat ice cream, or a place to stow your keys so they don't jangle so much (remember, they're on your belt loop). So repeat after me again: buttons are a bad idea. They're an even worse idea on the back than on the sides, because they're even more impossible to access. Matter of fact, let's get rid of the flaps altogether on the back pockets. Okay? Good.

Well, there you have it, clothing designers: the perfect cargo shorts. I'm not sure why this should be so hard, but now that I've spelled it out for you, can you get to work on it for me?

"The Case for Working With Your Hands" - NYTimes.com

2009-05-26T20:44:00.000-04:00

Great article from the NY Times about categories of work and their perceived and actual value. Money quote: "A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions."

Back from the library again

2009-05-22T10:23:00.001-04:00

OK, another stack of books and I don't know where to start. Bookish friends, any advice? (Other than the iced coffee, which seems obvious.)

Some more college talk: great links

2009-05-08T22:26:00.003-04:00

If you just can't get enough of this college talk, here are some more fun bits to keep you thinking about it.

This American Life: "Hey Mister Deejay"

I really wanted to include a reference to this episode of PRI's "This American Life" in my original article, but there just was not any room for more content. I've uploaded the pertinent portion of the show, in which contributor Adam Davidson tries to convince his younger brother D.J. (now a ditch digger) that dropping out of college was the worst decision he ever made. Davidson enlists the help of a Georgetown economics professor, whose advice might surprise you. It's worth a listen just to hear D.J.'s spectacular Massachusetts accent. Click here to access the MP3 from my Box.net account.

TED: Celebrating "Dirty Jobs"

Mike Rowe, the host of Discovery's show Dirty Work, gave a fantastic presentation at the TED conference in 2008. It hits home right at the end, when he begins to discuss the quality of some of the people he has met while hosting the show. Warning: there is some fairly graphic talk of sheep castration in the video. Not for the faint of heart. (Thanks to commenter J. on the original post for this link.)

David Wiley: "Openness and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education"

This is a SlideShare link to David Wiley's slides from his presentation at the 2008 E-Learn Conference. The first slide warns, "Your institution will be irrelevant by 2020." Spend a minute or two scanning the slides; they contain some very interesting information.

Jeff Jarvis: "Hacking education: Google U "

This article by Jeff Jarvis is the same one I linked to last week to whet your appetite for the topic. It's a nice blend of futurist realism (read: pessimism toward the future of the university as we know it) and futurist solutions (read: optimism about the continued role of teachers, certification, etc.)

And of course, for reference's sake, my original article can be found here, and my follow-up article is here. If you're still hanging with me here, I'd love to get your thoughts on any or all of these links. Leave them in the comments!

Down off the ledge

2009-05-07T10:02:00.002-04:00

The response to my previous post, "Why My Son (Probably) Won't Go To College," was extensive and very thoughtful. Thanks to everyone who shared thoughts, here, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

I want to share some follow-up thoughts, responding to some of the comments and clarifying certain points I may have left a little muddy in the original.

First, have no fear: we have no plans to prevent Abel from attending college; in fact, we are planning to save money toward his education in case he decides that's what he wants to do. We will prevent him from taking on as much debt as we did, though. I probably should have made this part clearer.

Along the same lines, I will stress that college is absolutely the best step after high school for some people. If a recent graduate knows for sure she wants to work in a field that requires specific educational preparation, AND if a combination of scholarships, parental contribution, and projected income during and after college make her sure she can afford to go, then it makes a world of sense. I think this situation is rather rare, however. It's rare that a high school senior can make this decision, and it's rare that she has access to that kind of money. It's utter insanity to send a confused 18-year old into a college environment at great expense just because "you have to go to college."

That being said, a middle ground approach suggested by Larsitron in his comment on the post, makes good sense. I don't agree with everything he said, but I have no arguments with his concluding paragraph: "I would encourage students to avail themselves of their local community colleges to get an idea of what they'd like to do and get some gen. ed. requirements out of the way. Then, once they have a better focus on career goals, enter the state university system and take advantage of the resources therein." This approach alleviates both of my concerns: it delays the decision about career, and it costs much less, especially in states like Arizona where the public college system is so affordable.

One important consideration is an individual's own character and personality: several people suggested that college is what you make of it, that you can learn a great deal if you just buckle down and work hard, that if you're actively pursuing the experience, it will be wonderful. I don't disagree, but I think this proves my point in a way. The people who fit this description are the ones who are going to make the most of their lives anyway. If you have that much drive, college is probably even less imperative as a preparatory step into the job market, real life, social fulfillment, and so on. You're also less likely to want to work in an environment where a bachelor's degree is generically required, not to mention more able to find creative ways to demonstrate you have the skills a college degree supposedly indicates.

And probably the most important clarification: My working assumption is that most people do not find personal or spiritual satisfaction strictly from their jobs. Since I regard these goals as infinitely more important than financial "success," I wanted to write the article in a way that forced people to examine their purpose, not just in going to college, but in life. And here's where I retract my disclaimer from the original post. This is pastoral advice: life is about a lot more than what kind of money you make. If you're going to college to get a career so you can earn money and be happy, you won't be happy, even if you do make the money. If your life goals include making a difference in the world by working in a field that requires one or more post-secondary degrees, then go for it. Just be smart about how you get there. Have a conservative plan for how to pay for it, and stick to the plan.

Thanks again for all the comments! Feel free to keep the discussion going.

Why My Son (Probably) Won’t Go To College

2009-05-05T21:29:00.003-04:00

Preface

A few months back, I posted to Twitter that by the time my followers' children reached college age, college would be irrelevant. The exact wording appears to be lost to time, but you can imagine the response I got. Let's just say I was in the minority. I promised to elaborate in a forum that allowed me to exceed 140 characters, and here we are.

Unfortunately, it has taken me almost 2,000 words to articulate the personal side of this issue: that my wife and I are disinclined to raise our son with the expectation that he must go to college to succeed in life. I realize this is not the article I promised—it does not prove that college will be irrelevant in 20 years—but I hope it is still interesting, provocative, and that perhaps it lays a decent foundation for the bigger argument. I look forward to your comments, because although I have strong opinions on the matter, discussion about it fascinates me. If it seems to be a topic that fascinates you as well, I will write more about it.

Here's the gist of what I'll be saying, in FAQ form:

Do I anticipate sending my son to a traditional four-year college when he graduates from high school? No.

Do I think college is a bad idea for everyone? No.

Do I think college is ever worth going into significant debt? No.

Do I think there are lots of better ways to spend the amount of money that college costs and accomplish the goals of a college education—even if you could pay cash? Yes.

A Hard Realization

It dawned on me one evening as I sat at my desk writing a check to a student loan creditor: college had not been worth all the debt it had put me in. Sure, I’d had a great time, met some really wonderful people (including my wife, who is the most really wonderful person I’ve ever met) and I’d learned a thing or two. But if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have signed those promissory notes.

For the next half hour, I sat, daydreaming about all the things I could do if I didn’t have this monthly payment monkey on my back. One of the things I caught myself imagining was contributing to a 529 plan for our son’s college education, so he wouldn’t have this much debt. I was quickly struck by the delicious irony of that dream. And then it really hit me: what if college was a bad investment, period? What if Abel would be better off not going at all?

The Expectation

It’s marked indelibly on our brains: “You can’t succeed if you don’t have a college degree. You’ll never get a good job unless you go to college. Without that degree, you’ll never get where you want to go.” We all know this, have known it, for as long as we can remember. It’s about as controversial as tying your shoelaces in a bow.

There’s just one problem: it simply isn’t true.

Naturally, not everyone is Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, both of whom made fortunes after dropping out of college. But that doesn’t mean an average person can’t be successful without going to college. In fact, I think you’re at least as likely, maybe more likely to succeed in life if you don’t go to college immediately after high school.

I recently conducted an informal poll on Twitter, asking “Why does one go to college?”

The answers came fast and hard for the next half hour, and they broke down into a handful of main categories:

To train for a career and/or boost a resume

To learn how to learn

To expand your horizons: socially, geographically, culturally

To have easy access to sex or to find a potential spouse, depending on the college the respondent attended

(Interestingly enough) Several people mentioned that college was simply the expectation for a high school graduate. I couldn’t agree more that this is true, or less that it is a valid reason.

My thesis is simple: college is far too expensive to be worthwhile for most people as a career catalyst, and you can obtain every other benefit better and more cheaply without going to college.

My wife and I believe this firmly enough that we have decided not to encourage college for our son, who is four years old at the time of this writing. (That loud popping sound was all four of his grandparents blowing a coronary artery. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad; we’re still going to save some money for him, just in case.)

Counting the Cost

Here is the estimated cost of college in 14 years, computed at Sallie Mae’s “College Answer” planning website. I will use the cost of four years at a private college as a basis for these arguments. If you want to propose a state school as an alternative, that's fine; just realize that the problems with the model still exist, and in many cases, the benefits are lost or severely reduced.

Four years at an average private college: $243,110

Four years at an average public college: $62,864

Two yeas at an average community college: $11,695

These numbers do not include room and board or books. As anyone who has attended college knows, those extra costs sting and cut deeper every semester. Add these necessities to the total, and you’re easily over a quarter million dollars, and that’s before the cost of typical college-kid tomfoolery.

This also assumes that you pay cash, which is less likely with each passing year. Far too often, the cost of college is financed, fattened up with interest, and paid over ten years—or worse still, in a trend that preys on the ignorant, consolidated by private lenders and stretched out over fifteen or twenty years so as to “lower your total monthly payment.” The leaden burden of ill-advised debt is what has recently dragged our economy deep into the sea of recession. Please don’t believe the lie that a piece of paper in a frame is worth more than financial freedom.

But even assuming you can earn the degree without taking on debt, the cost is so astronomical that any student or parent ought to think long and hard about the wisdom of placing that big a bet based on the life goals of a 17-year old. Have you met many 17-year olds lately? How many of them would you willingly hand $250,000 cash and say “Here: use this to prepare yourself for the job you’ll want when you’re 45!”? Not many. But that’s what you’re condoning if you assume every four-year old kid has to grow up to go to college.

All That Cash, and For What?

This financial ruination might be easier to stomach if it actually resulted in job preparedness or made your resume stand out, but it doesn’t, at least not at a rate of success that could possibly justify the risk. Think back to college: how many of your friends graduated with a degree in the program they entered college to pursue? How many of your friends are actually working in their field? And the really nasty, hairy question: of those who are, how many are putting their expensive knowledge—the stuff they learned in college, not the stuff they taught themselves or learned on the job—to use every day?

Think of it another way: how many job postings nowadays generically require “a four-year degree”? A lot of them. You may consider this a terrific argument for obtaining a four-year degree. But the more sobering interpretation of this reality is that bachelor’s degrees have been generalized and commoditized into irrelevance. A four-year degree is the high school diploma of the new century, only it costs a small fortune to obtain—and worse, if you really want to distinguish yourself, you need a graduate degree anyway. (By the way, this is not a sustainable model. We can’t afford to live in a world where a master’s degree is the distinguishing feature of a resume. I predict companies will soon start getting serious about otherwise skilled, qualified applicants who don’t have a college degree.)

If Not College, Then What?

I’d like to suggest that one more reason just about every high school graduate goes off to college is lack of imagination: they simply cannot fathom doing anything else. Well, I can. As a matter of fact, this is where it gets fun. Dream with me.

If you were to enroll in a middle of the road private college this year, four years’ tuition would cost you $94,282. Let’s be absurdly generous and imagine you could live, eat, buy books, and entertain yourself for four years on $5,718, and we’ll round it up to $100,000. Here are three better ways to spend that money and still get the benefits college offers. Keep in mind, we’re trying to set ourselves up for financial success while having a life-changing experience. And don’t forget that you could always go to college later in life.

Buy a 3-family house in a decent part of town. Put $75,000 down, live in the smallest apartment, and put $400 in the bank each month. With the remaining $25,000, buy a reliable used car and a year’s worth of groceries and gas. The ladies will love you. If you are a lady, the guys will fight over you.

Invest $75,000 in mutual funds. Go get a two-year degree at a cost of $5,000, living at home with your parents until you graduate. When you do, put the remaining $20,000 down on a small home and start your career as a nurse, dental hygienist, or administrative assistant. Keep investing. Retire at 45.

Spend two years traveling the world. Visit every inhabited continent briefly in the first year. Then, in the second year, return to the two cities you liked best. Live and work for six months each in each. If you decide to come back home afterward, you’ll be poor financially but incredibly rich in life experience. And trust me, the companies that matter will clamor to hire you rather than your friends who are just coming off their sophomore year bender. Remember, college diplomas are a dime a dozen. (Well, they are from the employer’s point of view. From the applicant’s perspective, this is a laughably inaccurate cliché.) How many resumes include six months learning Spanish while working as a barista in Argentina?

Case Studies to Make the Dean Blush

Still think college makes too much sense to pass up? Here are a few stories that prove the lie. All are true stories of people I know, people whose phone numbers I could give you if you wanted to check my research:

We recently had three doors replaced on our house. We hired a local carpenter to do the work for us; he was professional, prompt, and the work was superb. His price was fair, but let me tell you: his hourly wage is apparently a hell of a lot higher than mine. And I went to graduate school as long as most lawyers do. When he finished his work each day, he cleaned up and went home to his wife and kids and promptly forgot about my silly doors. He never went to college.

My sister is a nurse. She went to a community college for two years, earned an associate’s degree, and could now work as many hours as she wants in any city in America. Unfortunately for her bank account, she only figured out she wanted to be a nurse after she figured out she didn’t want to be a social worker, which only happened after she had borrowed a good $30,000 to get a degree. If only there had been some other system by which she might have figured that out.

One of the groomsmen in my wedding graduated a year after me in college. His degree was in religion and philosophy, but his first serious job was doing web design for Ford. Yes, that Ford. He is self-taught. His portfolio, which he developed without the help of any department head or advisor, spoke for itself.

All these numbers and stories lead me to my conclusion, a very personal decision that I nonetheless predict more and more parents will make as the educational models in our country change. The assumption that college is the only (or best) natural step to take after high school is erroneous and financially treacherous. That assumption stops with us and with our son. We will save money to contribute to his post-secondary education, but by no means will we insist that education take place in an institution of higher learning. The value just isn’t what it used to be.

* * * * *

DISCLAIMER: I usually avoid disclaimers, but this time I probably need one. The opinions expressed in this article are my own and are do not represent Artisan Church, where I serve as a pastor. They are not intended as pastoral counsel; nor should they be applied without discretion. Each situation is unique. As the nerds say, your mileage may vary.

Should we?

2009-05-01T00:21:00.002-04:00

Here is a nice foreword to my forthcoming article, "Why My Son Won't Go To College," which I anticipate publishing on Monday.

"Should we be forcing young people to go through 18, 16, or even 12 years of school—trying to get them all to think the same way—before they make things?"

—Jeff Jarvis, "Hacking Education: Google U"

Linford on writing

2009-04-16T08:50:00.002-04:00

"I've been trying to write songs again, and I’ve been hitting a maze of dead ends. I want the songs to reveal something to me, teach me something. It's slow going. I'm not sure where I'm going. Uncertainty abounds. But the writing works on me little by little and begins to change me. That's why I would recommend not putting off writing if it's something you feel called to: if you put it off, then the writing can't do the work that it needs to do to you."

—Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine in his most recent letter to fans

How to talk to my dog

2009-04-13T13:18:00.005-04:00

We have a new puppy, and we very much want him to be well socialized with all our friends, especially those who live right around the Big Yard where he plays. One way to accomplish this is for all of us who boss the puppy around to do so with consistent words and actions. So if you ever see Satchmo, try to keep these commands in mind. (And it's okay to use a firm voice!)

General guidelines:

1. Say it once, then enforce it. Don't teach him he doesn't have to listen until you say it a bunch of times.

2. If you're not going to enforce the command, skip it. Better he gets away with something than that anyone lets him get away with something. (This is true for kids, too, by the way.)

3. Let him know when he's done well. A steady stream of stern commands will turn into white noise pretty fast, so give him lots of support when he listens!

The commands:

1. Off!: Use when the dog is jumping up or climbing on you or something you don't want him to jump or climb on. Do not use the word "down" in this situation; "down" means "lie down." Enforce by gently but firmly pushing him off.

2. Leave it!: Use when he's about to get into something you don't want him near. This command is preventive maintenance. If he's already got your shoe in his mouth, it's too late for "leave it." Reinforce by saying "good boy" or something if he looks up. If he looks back down, it's okay to repeat the command. Once he picks it up, we're on to the next one.

3. Drop it!: Use when he's already got your shoe in his mouth. :-) Enforce by opening his jaws, not by pulling it. Pulling it = tug of war = play time. If you're not comfortable with this enforcement, that's okay; just come get one of us and we'll take care of it. Do not use the command "out" (which we favored at first); we now use "out" to mean "outside."

4. No biting!: Satchmo is entirely non-aggressive, so don't be scared by this one. It's just to tell him to stop puppy nipping, especially your sleeve, pant leg, etc. Enforce this by closing his mouth gently but firmly with your hand, making stern eye contact, and repeating the command. Do not swat. If you prefer, another method of enforcement would be to stop playing with him. Push him away and then ignore him for a while.

Of course there are other commands we use, but these should get you started. Questions? Leave them in the comments. Thanks for being a friend to the pup.

Christian = American?

2009-04-08T20:53:00.005-04:00

"There’s a good bit of research demonstrating that the majority of American’s [sic] identify themselves as “Christian” when asked by a pollster, but when asked what this label actually means in terms of core values and lifestyle choices, it becomes apparent that for the majority of them the meaning of 'Christian' is basically 'American.'"

—Greg Boyd, in his insightful article "Don’t Weep For the Demise of American Christianity"

Happy Music, UH!

2009-03-18T10:51:00.004-04:00

On Monday, Tracey and I went to Syracuse to see Maceo Parker, possibly my favorite musician. We got into the small theater just when the doors opened, and we ended up with a pretty good view. Like, I could reach up and touch the Maceo's mic stand.

I have never heard a band as tight as Maceo's. Truly a remarkable musical experience, and if he ever comes anywhere near your city, you should see about checking him out.

The funkiest saxophone player in the world

Satchmo

2009-03-09T14:20:00.004-04:00

This is our new puppy, Satchmo. He's a Lab/Shar Pei mix, and we adopted him from a veterinary shelter that was showing their dogs in Petsmart yesterday. He's eight weeks old, and he's very friendly. So far housebreaking and sleeping are both going better than expected. He's been pretty mellow so far too, which is sorta surprising since every Lab puppy I've ever seen has been a bit of a spaz. He's on an antibiotic for an infection, so maybe that's taking the edge off.

Here are a couple more photos:

What's wrong with this dialog?

2009-03-09T10:25:00.002-04:00

That's right! It doesn't have a checkbox allowing me to opt out of future warnings of this type. Which means I've seen it now approximately a dozen times. Bad iPhoto. Bad!

Related: anyone want to buy me a new internal hard drive? Didn't think so...

New guitar obsession

2009-02-23T20:30:00.004-05:00

You know I love Guild guitars, and you know I love hollowbody electrics. So when I saw John Mayer playing a hollowbody Guild in his Where the Light Is DVD (well worth the 13 bucks, by the way), I set about trying to figure out what he was playing.

As best I can figure, it's a Guild Starfire IV. You can sometimes find these from the golden era of USA-made Guilds for as low as $1,500 on eBay. Compare that to a Gibson ES-335 of a similar vintage, which would set you back about $9,000, and it seems like a bargain, right?

Anyway, never gonna happen. But here is the cut from the DVD that inspired me. His playing on this song is just dead on, and the tone he gets from the Guild is absolute perfection:

"The Dip" on getting tickets

2009-02-15T19:43:00.003-05:00

In an earlier post, I waved some tickets in your face and promised to say more about a little lesson I learned in the process of buying them.

To understand the lesson, you have to grasp how utterly unprepared the Live Nation ticketing system was for the deluge of Phish fans trying to get tickets to eleven concerts all at once:

At 9:59 a.m., one minute before the on-sale date opened, I opened the event page. At 10:00 a.m., the page wouldn't reload. It wasn't until almost twenty minutes later before I could even view the event page again.

Once the event page loaded, it was another half hour before clicking the "Buy Tickets" button would load the next page.

When I finally got to the next page in the system, where I could select the number of seats I wanted, the server timed out on the way to reserving them.

When that page finally loaded... well, you get the picture. There were still two more pages to go, as I later learned. All the while, the phone system was a nonstop busy signal. (I redialed over 100 times.)

After about an hour of unsuccessful attempts, I told a friend over IM, "I should probably give up and get some work done." I did have some work to do. And it seemed pointless to keep fighting the system when I was pretty sure the tickets were gone anyway—after all, these shows sell out in fifteen minutes, and it had already been an hour.

That's when I remembered Seth Godin's little book The Dip, which I read about a month ago. The central idea of the book is that you achieve excellence by knowing when to quit and when to persevere. The first concept—quitting well—is probably more interesting, but it was the second concept that helped me with the tickets.

Godin suggests that in any difficult endeavor, there will be an inevitable "dip" before you can achieve your goal. This is true of learning new skills or crafts, where the initial satisfaction of the activity wears off after a while, but if you want to get to true mastery, you have to "lean into the dip" by practicing. There is also a "dip" in career arcs, business growth, spiritual formation, and so on. Those who are willing to push through the dip will excel beyond the average precisely because most people are unwilling to persevere when it gets hard.

So when I felt like giving up on those tickets, it occurred to me: All around the country at this very moment, there are thousands of hippies thinking the same thing I am. They are all quitting, literally by the second, and when enough of them do, the Live Nation server will actually load these pages. So I kept plugging away, pushing through what I hoped was actually a Godin-style "dip."

Within twenty minutes, I had four tickets to the concert of my choice.

Buy The Dip from Amazon.com and I'll earn a few pennies, which I promise to use for a grilled cheese sandwich in the parking lot.

Horsey

2009-02-15T19:37:00.002-05:00

Earlier this week, we took a carriage tour through Savannah, Georgia. Before we left, I caught this photo of the horse:

They called him Luke. Luke Slow-walker, to be exact. It was a... leisurely tour. But fun.

Yeah baby!

2009-02-05T16:09:00.001-05:00

There's actually an interesting and possibly insightful story that goes along with these, which I will endeavor to tell you next week sometime when I'm on vacation in a sunnier clime. For now, I'm just showing off.

Do you know?

2009-02-02T15:27:00.002-05:00

Have I mentioned this before? This is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that we chose as a reading for our wedding.

Do you know, I would quietly
 slip from the loud circle,
when first I know the pale 
stars above the oaks
 are blooming.

Ways will I elect
 that seldom any tread
 in pale evening meadows— 
and no dream but this:
You come too.

Yup, that still works.

Another gig with Dan and Nate

2009-01-20T20:39:00.003-05:00

Editing this post probably makes it show up again in your RSS reader, huh? Serves as a good reminder to come out tonight, huh?

If you missed it last time, you have another chance:

Early risers

2009-01-09T08:11:00.007-05:00

"I only distribute pigs to early risers. Fern was up at daylight trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small pig, to be sure, but nevertheless, a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly."

—Henry Arable, in E.B. White's Charlotte's Web

I was up at 6:30 this morning, just about at daylight. I headed to the pool to swim a few laps and was home by 7:30 in time to take Tracey to work. And now it's 8:30, and I'm home, at the computer and ready to work. Having already worked out, showered, and eaten breakfast, I am free to get down to the difficult business of time-wasting. Somewhere in here there's a point.

And I think that last sentence was the point.

I'm learning—slowly, piecemeal—that as Annie Dillard said, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." This is true not only because wasting days will eventually turn into wasting your life, although that sobering notion should probably be more cause for my concern than it is. It is also true in the opposite way, which is the lesson I've been trying to internalize for over a year now. That is to say, if you want to get good at something, I mean really good at it, you have to do it. Based on the testimony of a rather diverse group of witnesses—Annie Dillard, Anne Lamott, Malcolm Gladwell, my friend Jason, Stephen King, Merlin Mann, to name only a few—I have reached the verdict that doing something of consequence does not require a whole lot more than actually making an effort.

And that's the problem, because making a real effort at doing something requires time. A lot of time. It's not just about getting up early (though that, for me, is probably a key factor) or shutting off Twitter/Facebook/BBC.co.uk/Halo 3/whatever distracts you (though again, do that too). The much bigger sacrifice for me is that I am beginning to think that I will have to forsake some things I enjoy if I want to excel at something specific.

I am left with a choice, or maybe a series of choices. Take creative and artistic endeavors, for example. I am a pretty good saxophone player, a fairly decent guitarist, and a solid writer. I also dabble in photography and a couple other artistic things. Let's say I wanted to become truly excellent at one of them. I think it's within my grasp to do so. But I don't know that it's possible without letting go of the hope of being "pretty good" at the others.

I'm not sure I'm willing to do that just yet. See, deep down inside, I have this burning desire to be the best at everything. Being better than most people at several things is a delightfully convenient cover for my failure to be the best at anything. The excuse goes something like this: "Oh sure, he plays guitar WAY better than I do, but I bet I'd kick his ass if we played basketball." Or if the tables are turned and I get dunked on in a basketball game, I imagine a rather hilarious scenario where the player who just embarrassed me tries to play the saxophone. It's helpful.

Except that it ensures that I never really will become the best at anything. Jack of all trades, master of none. And ain't that a shame.

The Journey of the Magi

2008-12-30T21:17:00.003-05:00

I'm busy preparing a sermon on the Epiphany of the Lord, which is the story of the wise men from the East who visit Jesus after his birth. Christians celebrate this event on January 6, also known as the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

[Update: You can listen to the sermon online at the Artisan website.]

Here is a beautiful poem by T.S. Eliot called "The Journey of the Magi," which Eliot wrote about his own journey from agnosticism to faith around the time of his baptism and acceptance into the Anglican Church in 1927. I especially love the last four lines of the first stanza and the entire third stanza. Enjoy!

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Gift card tango

2008-12-29T10:38:00.002-05:00

Whenever we are thinking about buying a thank you gift for someone at Artisan, we always go with a Wegmans gift card, for two reasons: first, who can't use a little grocery money? Second, and more importantly, we know that Wegmans has a gigantic carousel display of... gift cards. So with a $25.00 Wegmans gift card, you can go buy a $25.00 iTunes gift card, or a Home Depot gift card, or an Old Navy gift card, or heck, a plain old prepaid VISA card.

A friend of mine recently used a gift certificate to a local mall to get some gear at Guitar Center. He paid for the gear with grocery money, and then bought a VISA gift card (to use for groceries) using the mall gift certificate. Maybe he should have bought a Wegmans card instead...

This kind of thing amuses me. Any other creative gift card stories?

Playing a gig tonight

2008-12-17T11:10:00.003-05:00

If you're from the Rochester area and you're not doing anything tonight, come on down to Leaf and Bean to hear a nice trio of musicians being musicians. If you've never heard any of my music, well... you're probably not missing all that much. But Dan and Nate (warning: links take you to MySpace) are both tremendously talented singer-songwriters.

Hope to see you there!

Pretty

2008-12-06T13:36:00.001-05:00

Don't let the good looks fool you. She'll rip your heart out and stomp it into dust.

Help solve the water crisis this Christmas

2008-11-20T07:45:00.004-05:00

Check out this fantastic short video for an incredible cause:

Artisan Church is participating in the Advent Conspiracy this year, and I'm really excited about it. If you'd like to get involved, there are a few ways:

Send a monetary gift to Artisan Church (online, or by sending a check to 3 Arlington St., Rochester NY, 14607). Mark it "Advent Conspiracy" or "for clean water," and 100% of it will go into our clean water fund.

Donate directly to a clean water initiative, such as Living Water International.

Visit Artisan starting November 30 to hear more. Details about the series are here.

Find me

2008-11-07T10:11:00.002-05:00

Actual recent web searches that sent people to this site:

"bob jones crazy" (Absolutely true.)

"hamer echotone vs gibson 335" (The Echotone wins unless you're rich and/or vain.)

"scott austin blog" (Well... sure.)

"macaroni and cheese from scratch" (I'm in favor of this.)

"michael eisner and anaheim ducks" (I'm not in favor of this.)

"where can i find hail to the redskins for my ipod" (Sadly, I don't know. But are you aware that Google isn't a person?)

"subdominant minor substitution" (I believe you're looking for a minor ii chord.)

"happy anniversary love pitchers" (Huh?)

"fixing crab legs" (Apparently, search engines think I know a lot more than I actually do.)

I.Q.

2008-10-31T23:47:00.003-04:00

What's the I.Q. of the person who put together this ad (or the algorithm that determined it)?

Spelling error pet peeve

2008-10-24T15:18:00.000-04:00

Maybe I should print this on a T-shirt.

Only Apple

2008-10-22T09:24:00.003-04:00

Only Apple could make this lousy weather look beautiful:

So little time

2008-10-01T16:30:00.001-04:00

Just got back from the library:

Now, the difficult task of choosing which to read first.

White balance

2008-09-29T21:40:00.004-04:00

I shot a slew of pictures at a wedding on Saturday. The reception was held inside a ballroom after dark, so it was definitely a low light situation. I was very glad for my f/1.8 lens, which allowed me to shoot in program mode without the flash and get fairly decent raw images—not the greatest, but good enough.

I wasn't totally satisfied with the photos, though; they all had a slight yellow cast. The yellow gave it a nice soft look, but it was also somewhat unnatural. I wanted to correct this, and I knew I probably could since I shot everything in RAW mode, which leaves the photos unprocessed (as opposed to shooting in jpg, which compresses the images as it writes them to the camera's memory card). But I didn't really know how to do it, or even if I could do it at all with iPhoto, which is the only photo management application I have.

So I sent a quick message to my Internet friend Greg Kendall-Ball, who is a professional photographer and has been gracious in the past about giving me pointers. (Seriously, check out his work—it's excellent. Order some prints. Tell him I sent you.) I asked him how to get rid of the yellow tint in my photos, and he replied and advised me that iPhoto does in fact do white balance correction. And it's pretty easy; here's what he said: "On the 'Adjust' panel, next to 'Tint' is an eyedropper. Click that on a spot that should be white." Here's the relevant portion of the Adjust panel in iPhoto. The eyedropper is all the way to the left.

And it's a simple one-click process. There were a lot of white shirts and tablecloths (and a certain white dress, of course) in the photos I took, so it was easy enough to find a "true" white for the software to rely on for its adjustments. Clicking on something that should be white had an instant dramatic effect. Here is one before/after example, a shot of my friend Anna and her son Troy. (I clicked on Troy's shirt to make the adjustment.)

In some ways I like the softness of the poorly balanced image better. I can't decide if this is just bad judgment on my part, or if there's some additional manipulation I should apply to the photo to give it back some of its warm glow. It could also be that the automated correction overdid it and fine-tuning it is the key.

I welcome your comments and advice, especially if you have more of a clue about this kind of thing than I do. Thanks, Greg, for the tip! (And the rest of you: remember to visit his site and check out his work.)

Hail to the Redskins

2008-09-28T23:11:00.002-04:00

Today the Redskins beat heavily favored Dallas on the road, handing the Cowboys their first loss of the season. On a day when the Yankees are getting their big plasma screens ready so they can watch the Red Sox in the playoffs from the comfort of their living rooms, it's nice to see the hated Cowboys taken down a notch.

Can we possibly stop it in time?

2008-09-24T15:29:00.002-04:00

I say no, but here's Ron Paul's advice:

"Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity."

Find your senators and representative here. It can't hurt to call.

Enough already

2008-09-18T21:56:00.001-04:00

Can allergy season please end now?

Yes, I actually buy tissues in bulk. And not the cheap kind that rips your nose apart.

Design our tattoo, win fifty bucks

2008-09-16T13:52:00.003-04:00

When Tracey and I ran a marathon last year, we decided to get matching tattoos to commemorate the event. Off and on over the past year, I've sat down to try and work up a design that I'd be comfortable having on my body when I die, and I just can't seem to get it quite right. It's time to give up and turn the job over to someone more qualified. Are you that person? If so, we'll give you $50. Hey, I know it's not much for the type of design work you're capable of, but come on: you get the satisfaction of knowing it's stuck on our arms (or ankles, or backs, or whatever) forever and ever!

Here are some criteria.

Size: Fairly small. It should be able to fit on, say, a large red delicious apple.

Color: Black is okay, but some color is nice too. Nothing too crazy that makes it really expensive or requires several sessions.

Content: Up to you. I've been working with pure text, just the mileage (26.2) and the date (9-16-2007); I'd also be okay with a graphic if it's well-designed. See the running blog I linked above for inspiration.

Rules: We reserve the right to reject any and all submitted designs. There is no guaranteed winner.

Questions? Post a comment or send me an email!

Not all dialog boxes are good

2008-09-13T14:20:00.006-04:00

For every great dialog box, there's a crappy one:

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Cancel or OK?" Ick.

This is so Windows 95 it's pathetic that a major Internet property would use it in the year 2008. [Update: Elliot notes that this is not Google/Blogger's fault, that it is a limitation of Javascript. Fair enough: whoever is at fault ought to fix it.] The buttons should say "Stay here" and "Leave without saving," or something similar. As it stands now, I'm forced to read all the text, interpret which nondescript button corresponds to my desired course of action, and click—hoping I got it right.

(I first encountered this idea several years back on the site "X vs. XP," which played a major role in my decision to switch to the Mac.)

Sync For Cider!

2008-09-13T10:56:00.005-04:00

A few posts back, I lamented my frustration with my calendar workflow, mainly because I wanted a good sync solution. The impetus for this whine happened a few weeks earlier, when my family's lack of synchronization with calendaring resulted in a double booking that meant I would miss Artisan Cider Days. Cider Days is perhaps the best event of the year at Artisan Church: apple picking, pie-eating, turkey frying, cider pressing—oh, the tangy, unpasteurized goodness of freshly pressed apple cider! Big fun next month guys; seriously, don't miss it. For me, big fun 13 months from now. Ouch. Bad.

But it wasn't just that I had no good way to sync calendars with Tracey. If that was all I wanted, I could set her up with a Google Calendar, subscribe to it, pull it into iCal, and go from there. Google Calendar is a brilliant way to keep track of your calendars, for the obvious reason that it's available on any Internet-capable computer in the world. (Well, except when you can't—more in a minute.)

The only problem is that I don't like using it.

I don't like the way it looks; I don't like the way it responds to clicking anywhere in the interface; I don't like that I can't choose black as a calendar color. (Black. Come on guys, basic black!) I don't like much of anything about it, except the part that I love: the always available access.

Apple's iCal, on the other hand, is an calendar app I'm both used to and fond of. I can use it anywhere I have my laptop—regardless of whether the Internet is available, and regardless of whether Google Calendar decides to wet its pants about showing me one of my calendars, which it did for about 36 hours a couple weeks back. As an added bonus, I find its user interface to be better than Google Calendar's in almost every way. I realize that this may be purely a matter of personal taste and familiarity—I'm not a UI expert. But that's the way I feel about it.

An ideal solution would be one that allows me to take advantage of all the best parts of Google Calendar AND all the best parts of iCal. A solution that would allow me to add and edit events in iCal and view them in Google Calendar. A solution that would bring Tracey's calendar to me and send my calendar to her. This last one, the bidirectional syncing, is the key. Without some way to get my iCal events up to my Google Calendar, Tracey would have no way to see my calendar, and sending hers to me would be a pointless exercise.

Enter BusySync, an OS X preference pane application that syncs local calendars on your home network as well as syncing Google Calendar with iCal. I don't know how or why it works. All I know is that it does. I don't care about the local syncing, but I rely on the Google/iCal syncing, and it works flawlessly. So here's a crude diagram of how my calendar flow goes now:

iCal <--> Google Calendar (all of them: mine, Tracey's, the church's—every single one)
iCal <--> iPhone (crucial for viewing and editing on the go)
iCal --> iCal Events (a dashboard widget that shows me the next 7 days at a glance)

That's pretty simple, and believe me, it makes life a lot less complicated. Well worth the $25 a BusySync license costs! It's hard to explain how much of a relief it is to have this problem solved. So come on friends, lets sync our calendars—do it for the cider! Sync For Cider! Sync For Cider!

(Hey, it's as least as good a slogan as "Drill, Baby, Drill!")

Happy Anniversary to us

2008-09-04T00:05:00.002-04:00

It was nine years ago that Tracey and I said our vows under a small oak tree in Letchworth State Park. I am struck simultaneously with the sense that the whole thing happened just yesterday and a feeling that we've always been together. I certainly would prefer not to imagine what my life would have been like without her!

I think I may have said this last year, but it's the clearest way I can express my love for my wife: I don't care where we end up or what we're doing. As long as we're together, I will be happy.

Birthday lens

2008-09-02T19:22:00.004-04:00

My mom and dad got me a terrific new lens for my birthday. I already love the results I'm getting, even though I'm experiencing the usual sense of "I don't know what I'm doing with this quite yet" that comes with a powerful new tool. But check this out (now, granted, the raw material here is pretty hard to screw up). This glass captures nice light:

Abel makes Tracey smile

Thanks Mom and Dad!

I love a good dialog box

2008-08-29T09:17:00.005-04:00

But then really, who doesn't love a good dialog box? This kind of thing is why I love using OS X, and it's also why I really wanted a sync solution that allowed me to manage my Google calendars outside of Google's interface. (BusySync is working great so far, by the way.)

By way of comparison, when I tested moving this event in Google Calendar, it just moved it—no dialog confirmation at all, not even a crappy one.

Calendar Sync

2008-08-21T00:59:00.002-04:00

I've got a big challenge to overcome with my calendars. I want them to sync. All of them. With my computer, with my iPhone, with my wife's computer. Shared calendars, individual calendars, calendar subscriptions from Google Calendar—all of them. I have a pretty decent partial solution in place, but it requires a bit of digital duct tape to hang together.

I'm exploring my options, but since my situation is a bit unusual, it's hard to know if the recommendations I read online are applicable to me. With that said, does anyone have experience with Spanning Sync or BusySync, or another syncing/sharing option for multi-user iCal/Google Calendar situations? I'd be willing to pay for the right solution, even if it included MobileMe.

I swear this isn't a commercial

2008-08-06T22:04:00.002-04:00

But honestly, if you don't own Over the Rhine's double album masterpiece Ohio yet, buy it right now! If you don't think it's brilliant, I'll buy it back from you. I was just reading about this album and thought I'd mention it. And Amazon's price is currently less than eleven bucks, which ain't bad for a double album containing such genius.

Blog Network on Facebook

2008-08-04T14:32:00.002-04:00

Hey friends, if you're a Facebook sort of person, I'd appreciate it if you'd join the POSTUS FREQUENTUS blog network. I'm contemplating some integration between this site and Facebook, and the first step along the way would be for you to confirm the blog for me. It only takes a quick couple of clicks and requires no personal information or Facebook application installation.

Check out the sidebar or click here to visit the page on Facebook. Thanks!

Quotable baseball

2008-08-01T13:52:00.000-04:00

From Jayson Stark's Trade deadline winners and losers column on ESPN.com, a comment from an AL East executive about the Red Sox trading Manny Ramirez.

"Don't get me wrong," said an executive of one AL East club. "The Red Sox do a great job. They utilize every advantage they have, and they use all their resources as well as anyone. But sometimes, I don't think even they realized what they had in Manny. When Manny comes up, you feel like you have to pass out ex-lax to your whole team because everybody gets a sick feeling in their stomach -- especially when he had [David] Ortiz there in the middle with him.

"Look, Jason Bay is a great player. But he's not Manny. You're talking about one of the greatest right-handed hitters in the history of the game. I've seen so many situations where you'd think you've got a game, and then all of a sudden that guy came up and everything changed. I've seen what he does to pitchers. I've seen how he changes games. They'll miss that. That's all I can say."

Uh, yup. Yankee fans will be glad not to be seeing that guy in October.

iPhone application reviews suck

2008-07-31T13:41:00.003-04:00

Someone needs to step up and start making well-done iPhone app reviews on YouTube.

Since there is not (yet, at least) any mechanism to demo paid apps, the natural thing to do if you're curious about an application is to go to YouTube and search for the application's name. And yes, you will find that someone has reviewed the application you're wondering about, but no, it is not watchable and therefore it is unhelpful.

Here are some characteristics of an unsuitable iPhone application review:

1. A nasally-voiced reviewer talking through the back of his throat. I'm sorry to say that this disqualifies most RIT students, who would otherwise be most qualified to review software. (I kid because I love!)

1a. A reviewer with freshman mustache.

2. A shaky handheld camera. Here's a simple rule: use a tripod. Your camera doesn't have a tripod mount? It's not good enough. No, your cell phone camera is not good enough.

2a. Put the iPhone on the table, man! It's nauseating to watch it swim around as you hold it in your hand. Also makes it hard for your camera to autofocus.

3. An introduction longer than 20 seconds or so. We're here to see the app, not your face. If you must show us your face (and it's true that certain reviewers might find this in their best interest), remember #2.

4. A run time of more than three minutes. We don't need to see every feature and every preference option. Show us how the application works and go home. If you really, really have more than three minutes of content, separate it into sensible sections.

5. UTTER and TOTAL darkness. Dudes, the screen on this device kicks ass. It can handle the lamp in your dorm room. Making us watch your review in the dark makes us feel like we're doing something oogy or impolite.

So there you have it. You now know what to do. Who's up for the task?

A study in contrast

2008-07-29T00:08:00.002-04:00

Dunn's Camps, where my family has been going since my dad was a little boy, is an interesting place. Both beautiful and bizarre, it is a series of small, rustic cabins on a small, rustic lake in central Maine. The cabins are rented out to families at a very reasonable rate, and they are largely maintained by the families who rent them. This leads to some really, um, precious homemade decor, such as the following:

How indeed.

At the same time, the lake itself (it's actually a pond—Hogan Pond, to be specific) is a lovely and peaceful place to relax, especially at night, when you can sit on the eastern shore and watch the sunset.

Sometimes we put up with the bizarre to get access to the beauty.

One of many highlights from Yankee Stadium

2008-07-28T23:50:00.002-04:00

A Hebrew National hot dog in a crusty roll. Click to enlarge and enjoy all the textural goodness.

More highlights later, perhaps.

Nice job, Yankees fans

2008-07-16T08:53:00.002-04:00

In an incident that's not nearly as disturbing as the story I linked to earlier, Yankees fans recently cursed at and idly threatened Jonathan Papelbon's pregnant wife during the All-Star parade in New York City. This uncouth behavior was in response to a typical media overreaction to a blandly stupid statement Papelbon made earlier in the week that he would like to close the game for the American League. I don't defend the behavior of the Yankees fans who were involved.

Still, I can't resist pointing out, Paps, that you wouldn't be "letting" Mariano Rivera "go ahead of" you because he's "elder statesman" of the game of baseball. He'd be closing the game because he's having a better season than you, and because he is made of awesome and you are not.

Weird cat

2008-07-13T00:14:00.006-04:00

I have never claimed to understand cat behavior, much less that of cat owners, but I ran into an especially weird one today. But it was good-weird, so I'm not complaining—just sharing a funny story.

We went swimming at a friend's pool this afternoon. At one point, Tracey and Abel went inside so he could use the bathroom, and I decided to hop out of the pool and go sit in the sun for a few minutes and play with my iPhone. Our friend's cat was outside, and he immediately came over to me and jumped up onto my sopping wet lap. I was sure he'd jump right off when he felt the water, but no; he settled right into my lap and made himself comfortable. He then proceeded to lick my arm for about five solid minutes. ("Um? Okay.") I took a picture.

He was very friendly, just a little weird. Come to think of it, I know some people like that.

Nice job, Red Sox fans

2008-07-08T07:26:00.001-04:00

According to this article in the Cape Cod Times, Red Sox fans are total jerks. But we knew that already, right?

"Police said Robert Correia of Falmouth and several others attacked a driver with a baseball bat Friday night after spotting New York license plates on the man's vehicle and believing he was a Yankees fan."

Yes, the man's children were in the car to witness the event.

Waterboarding

2008-07-07T12:32:00.000-04:00

Every American should read this Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens.

Etta James album $1.99

2008-07-05T16:41:00.005-04:00

Today's Amazon MP3 deal is a good one: Etta James's At Last! for $1.99. The title track alone is worth two bucks, right? But the rest of the album is very good too. As far as I know, this deal is good for today only, Saturday, July 5.

Words I sometimes need to hear

2008-06-30T08:45:00.000-04:00

Today's simultaneously inspirational and depressing quotation comes from an e-mail exchange between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell. At one point, Gladwell speculates about the reason for some professional athletes' apparent lack of work ethic (emphasis mine):

"This is actually a question I'm obsessed with: Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so? Why does Eddy Curry come to camp every year overweight?

"The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare."

I want to respond to this, but I fear that if I start writing, I might not stop—and that's not in your best interest, even if it might be in mine. So I'll just say that these words are deeply challenging to me and leave it at that.

Update your feeds

2008-06-26T17:35:00.002-04:00

I've had a couple people tell me that the old RSS feed for my blog no longer updates since I switched from sjaustin.blogspot.com to www.sjaustin.com. The old URL will redirect to the new one, but the old feeds are no good anymore. So if you haven't yet updated, take a moment and do so now—the links are in the sidebar.

Thanks for reading!

My latest favorite Facebook ad

2008-06-26T14:29:00.003-04:00

The guy's expression is priceless.

Big rig

2008-06-22T00:10:00.003-04:00

A few friends and I went down to the East and Alexander stage of the Rochester International Jazzfest tonight to see Joe Bonamassa, who was opening for Medeski Martin & Wood—a free show.

Joe's rig included an impressive pedal array and an even more impressive amp setup. He was playing through four 100-watt heads: a Marshall Silver Jubilee, a Category 5, a Carol Ann, and a Two-Rock. These were powering two 4x10 cabinets.

Here's a crappy cellphone picture I snapped of the setup:

Some ridiculous tone, and let's just say loud enough that my ears are still ringing a little three hours later.

Force is away

2008-06-21T09:05:00.000-04:00

This post is about Ultimate (a disc sport for hippies). Specifically, I'm writing up a description of a defensive strategy called the force so that the team I captain can learn it better. Although descriptions of the defensive force abound on the Internet, I find almost all of them to be too complicated for brand new players to understand. So I'm taking a crack at it myself, and hopefully it will be more helpful.

First, a simple diagram that shows a vertical stack, which is the offensive formation used in almost all rec league games (click to enlarge, or better yet, open the image in a new window or tab):

Setting up the force

Blue, the defense, has decided to "force away," which means they are trying to force red, the offense, to the away side of the field. (In our league, the home side is the side where the bags and chairs and spectators are, and the away side is opposite.) The force is accomplished by one person at a time: whoever is marking the handler—in other words, whoever is defending the offensive player with the disc.

In the diagram, you can see that the defender on the disc has turned her back to the home side of the field. She will hold her arms wide and low and do everything possible to prevent the handler from throwing to the home side. At the same time, she will allow the handler to make any throw to the away side—because that is the direction of the force. She's forcing the disc to the away side. When she sets up her defense, she should yell, "Force is away!"

So what do the defenders in the stack do when the force is away? As you can see, they are all standing on the away side of the players they are guarding—the opposite of their teammate who is marking the disc. Why do they stand on this side?

Because they trust their teammate to prevent any throws to the home side.

Assuming that the player marking the disc does her job, there is no need for the stack defenders to worry about the home side of the field. Therefore, they stay on the away side to make it more difficult for the handler to complete the only throws he can make—throws to the away side.

So remember: if you're marking the disc, you face toward the force side, and if you're defending in the stack, you stand on the force side.

Break!

When the force is away, as in this diagram, the home side is called the "break" side, because the handler will have to "break" the force in order to throw to this side. When you are forcing against the handler, you may hear a teammate yell, "No break!" This lets you know that an offensive player is cutting to the break side. When the player you are marking in the stack cuts to the break side, make sure to let your teammate who is marking the disc know.

It is crucial that we don't allow the offense to break the force. As you can see from the defensive setup in the diagram, one completed pass to the break side would set up the offense for an easy series of throws to their goal—because all the defenders in the stack are on the force side!

In the event that the offense does break the force, the defender should yell "Broken!" so his teammates know to hustle and catch up to their marks, who are all sprinting toward the break side in hopes of that easy goal.

When to force

Usually, when a team is first learning the force, they will choose one side and force in that direction for the whole game, sometimes switching the direction of the force at halftime. After the team understands the force a little better, they can and should change it as needed.

The general goal at the rec level is to force the other team's handlers to use their forehand throw, because a new player's forehand tends to be less accurate. In the diagram above, blue is forcing the red handler to throw a forehand, assuming the handler is right-handed. If this is the reason for the force, you'll need to switch the direction of the force after every point, because the teams switch sides.

Occasionally, the force will switch mid-point. At the rec level, this is pretty rare, because it causes confusion. But if the handler is very close to the home sideline, it wouldn't make sense to force away. So if the disc ends up on the sideline opposite the direction of the force, it would be appropriate to change the direction of the force to take advantage of the situation.

Other resources

Wikipedia's description of the force: Helpful and concise, as Wikipedia often is.

The Ultimate Handbook's page on defense: The UH is a good site, but it tends to be a little more advanced than might be helpful. (For one thing, they assume that cuts come from the back of the stack, while almost all rec teams cut from the front.)

Thinking about MobileMe?

2008-06-19T09:38:00.000-04:00

Last week, Apple announced their new push syncing service called MobileMe. It looks like it will be really fantastic for both Mac and PC users, especially those who have (or will have) iPhones. MobileMe replaces the much-maligned .Mac service. It will cost $99 per year, which is quite reasonable—think of it as $8.25 a month to keep all your contacts, email, and calendars up to date on every device you own—but there is a way to get it a little cheaper.

Remember that MobileMe replaces .Mac, and that Apple will upgrade existing .Mac members at no additional charge. As many people know, the cheapest way to get the .Mac service has always been from Amazon.com, which sold it at a discount ranging from 20 - 30%. If you know you will want MobileMe, the best thing to do would be to buy .Mac from Amazon now (current price is $77.49) and get the upgrade in a few weeks when MobileMe formally debuts.

Shiny and new

2008-06-16T20:55:00.002-04:00

Well, my blog suddenly feels all growed up.

After slapping up a rough draft of the banner a few days ago (see the previous post for details), I have made a few tweaks and now have a final (for now) version. In addition to the change in the images, you may notice that the URL now reflects my actual domain, which is www.sjaustin.com. Blogger is still powering and hosting the blog, but I recently learned that you can use your own domain. Since I've owned sjaustin.com for a few years but never really done anything with it, I decided to make the switch.

If you're pulling my blog's feed, I don't think you'll notice anything new, but if you have any trouble, the "Subscribe to P.F." section in the sidebar should be accurate and up-to-date. Perhaps someday my domain will host something more complicated than a Blogger-powered blog, but I am actually quite happy with what Blogger provides free of charge. And now that it's using a "real" domain, it seems like home for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for reading, friends. I mean that.

My new 80/20 banner

2008-06-14T00:40:00.003-04:00

There are people in the world who would decide to make a new banner for their blog, and they would come up with an idea, spend many hours perfecting it, then tweak everything to get it just so, and only then (after a period of days or weeks) would they dream of publishing it. And there are other people in the world who would decide to make a new banner for their blog, and they would get an idea late at night, immediately set to implementing it, get it about 80% right, and then publish it—flaws and all—knowing they can always come back and fix stuff later, and in the meantime HEY PRETTY BANNER.

I am definitely in the latter camp.

It's not ideal, but hey, it's up there—which is more than you can say for the blog banners currently being designed by people in the first group. (And I think we can all agree that First Groupers are colossally annoying, right?) Any suggestions for the final 20%? I'm fighting somewhat against Blogger's limited template options, all of which disagree to some extent and in some way with the banner as I've put it together. But I'd still like to hear what you think.

Three more reasons to use Safari

2008-06-07T18:09:00.000-04:00

1. Resizable input fields: In Safari, web forms have the resize indicator, so you can enlarge the size of the input field, as these two screenshots demonstrate (easier to perceive if you click to enlarge):

2. Drag and drop uploads: No more browsing your computer's hard drive to find the file you want to upload. When a browser form asks you to choose a file to upload, like this:

don't click the "Choose file" button. Instead, drag your file to the spot where it says "no file selected" and drop it there. This is especially useful for those of us who work from our desktops.

3. Merge All Windows: a really useful feature for times when you find yourself with multiple open windows that you'd like to consolidate into one. Simply go to Safari's Window menu and select "Merge All Windows" to turn each window into a tab in the frontmost window. Even now that Safari has a bona fide single window mode, this feature is still really helpful for stuff that is supposed to pop up into a new window—such as video players and the like—but that you might want to tuck into the window you're working in.

Note that this is even easier if you map a keyboard shortcut to the command. As you can see, I've set Command + Shift + 1 to activate this feature, but by default there is no keyboard shortcut. Note also that "Merge All Windows" puts everything into the frontmost window, so if you want to tuck away that video player, make sure you bring your main window to the front before you invoke the command.

And a final word about all this: Yes, I know that you can do some of these cool things in Firefox with add-ons, which the Internet Illuminati have decided shall no longer be called extensions, perhaps to avoid confusion with the hair thing. The "merge windows" feature, for example, can be achieved in Firefox using the Tab Mix Plus add-on. Two reasons this is irrelevant to me. One: tweaking Firefox with lots of add-ons will eventually make it slower. And more importantly, two: I generally just want the best possible stock user experience out there. I understand that not everyone agrees with me on that point, and that's okay. That doesn't change the fact that Safari is the best browser on the planet, right out of the box.

Great deal at Amazon MP3 store

2008-06-04T14:47:00.001-04:00

Allison Krauss + Union Station's album Lonely Runs Both Ways is on sale for $3.99 (not sure for how long) at the Amazon MP3 store. Thought you might like to know.

Maceo Parker and his band

2008-05-30T23:35:00.004-04:00

I'm sorry, I have no words. Do yourself a favor and carve out 20 minutes for these videos. No, really. Do it.

"Let's Get It On" (The guitarist's intro alone might bring you to tears.)

"Shake Everything You've Got" (Check out the vocal jam before the drum solo.)

If anyone could figure out where these videos—obviously produced and from the same set—came from and find me a copy on DVD, I would love you forever and ever.

UPDATE: I did a little more searching, and it appears that these cuts are taken from the 1994 DVD "My First Name is Maceo," which very happily was re-released a few years ago and is available from Amazon! You better believe I'm buying that!

Three reason to use Safari

2008-05-30T09:35:00.001-04:00

If you're a Mac user, there are essentially three major choices for your browser: Safari, which is the default; Firefox, which is the one Windows users tend to prefer when they first switch because it is familiar; and Camino, which is like Firefox with a better, faster interface but without add-ons (a.k.a. extensions). Without getting into the browser wars, here are three of the many reasons I think Safari is the best browser in the world:

1. The contents of pages in Safari's history are accessible via Spotlight. Which means that if you know you read something on the Internet two weeks ago about the Dharma Initiative being a metaphor for ABC's television censors, but you have no idea where you read it, you can easily and quickly find the page in question.

2. SnapBack. Both the address bar and the search field have this handy feature, which returns you to an "anchor point"—either the original site you visited, or the original results from your latest Google search. A similarly useful feature in Safari (call it reason 2.5) is that you can right-click the title of any page to navigate the hierarchy of that site.

3. Because it was written in a more modern programming language, Safari has access to all kinds of OS X services that Firefox and Camino do not. There are many, and lots of them are obscure, but try this: mouse over a word in Safari and press Control+Command+D to get a pop-up dictionary listing for that word. That kind of thing doesn't work in the other browsers.

As I hinted, there are more reasons than just these three, which are intentionally somewhat obscure, but hopefully this is useful in spite of its brevity. Happy surfing!

A book everyone should own

2008-05-19T14:11:00.004-04:00

If you've ever discussed food with me, you know that I often refer to The New Food Lover's Companion, which is one of the most fascinating—not to mention actually useful—reference books ever written. Long used by professional chefs to settle back-of-house restaurant debates, The New Food Lover's Companion is an indispensable inhabitant of my kitchen bookshelf. If you've ever found yourself wondering what the difference between dark and light brown sugar is, or the best way to store grapes to prevent spoilage, or what chutney is—or really, if you've ever had any question about food—you should buy a copy of this book. In the age of Google and with easily accessible libraries all around us, I do not usually recommend purchasing books at all, especially reference books, but this is one that is well worth the twelve bucks it costs at Amazon. It is both small enough and sturdy enough to slip into any drawer or corner of your kitchen.

Here are a few facts I've learned from the NFLC over the years:

The eggplant is not a vegetable— it is actually a berry.

Croissants (crescents) were created by some Austrian cooks to commemorate their thwarting of a Turkish raid.

Whereas Americans typically pair rhubarb with strawberries, the Brits prefer it with ginger. (Ew.)

Saffron is so expensive because each ounce is made from 14,000 tiny stigmas from a purple crocus—each of which only produces three stigmas.

Enjoy!

Walk the Line Between Pleasure and Pain

2008-05-16T22:00:00.003-04:00

Artisan Church is in the middle of a music-driven series called "Walk the Line." It kicked off two weeks ago with one of our bands doing songs from the civil rights movement to raise the topic of walking the line between silence and violence. Then last week another of our bands brought the music of the Black Crowes, and we tackled the very challenging (sometimes controversial) topic of walking the line between what is sacred and what is secular.

Which brings us to this Sunday, when my band, which is called Saint Brigid's Lake, will sample several songs from the Over the Rhine catalog. I'll be interspersing a message in two or three parts entitled "Walk the Line Between Pleasure and Pain." I'll use passages from the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes—two of the most fascinating books of the Bible. But the focus will continue to be on the music. I'm quite proud of the work the band has done in preparing for this week, and I hope you'll come check it all out on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. or 5:00 p.m.

Yeah, I'm probably not going to watch it

2008-05-14T10:14:00.001-04:00

Here's another pop culture critique graph for you to ponder.

Yeah, I'm probably not going to buy it

2008-05-12T11:44:00.002-04:00

Some facts are best represented visually. The following isn't one of them, but I thought it would be fun to make a chart anyway. Click to enlarge it if you can't see the text well enough. Enjoy!

Why iPod killers are harmless

2008-05-09T15:01:00.001-04:00

John Gruber gets it: "Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr)—they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would 'soon' catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target—over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year."

Let's hope Apple also continues to be their own best competition on the personal computing side (yes, yes, I know, the iPhone is a personal computer)—because those are the products that matter most right now.

Fixing Safari's final flaw

2008-05-06T09:54:00.004-04:00

Not too long ago, I wrote somwehere that the addition of the "double-click tab bar for a new empty tab" feature fixed my second-to-last remaining complaint with Safari's usability. The last complaint, as you may recall, was the lack of a "single window" mode in Safari: a preference by which a user could force links that are coded to open in a new window to open in a new tab instead. Both Firefox and Camino have this feature accessible via their preferences window, but Safari—my browser of choice—does not.

[Aside. Web developers: please stop using target="_blank" unless you have a phenomenally good reason. With the ubiquity of tabbed browsing, it should be up to the user to determine what he or she wants to do with your links. Forcing links to pop up in a new window is endlessly frustrating and causes needless clutter. Even worse is when the user presses Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) to open it in a new tab and is overridden, and the link opens a new window anyway. Google, I am looking angrily in your direction.]

Well, it turns out that Apple added single window mode to Safari (on the Mac, at least) in version 3.1; they just chose not to make it a visible feature accessible via the preferences window. Why it is not deemed important or useful enough to be a preference, I do not know. But you can enable it by a very simple Terminal command, as articulated by the nice people over at naquah.net.

For those disinclined to follow that link (which, I promise, will not open in a new window regardless of your browser preferences), here's what you do.

1. Launch Terminal. Use Spotlight or navigate to Applications > Utilities.

2. Paste this command into the window and press return:
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

3. Restart Safari.

Now, whenever a link is coded to open in a new window, Safari will stop it in its tracks and direct it neatly into a new tab in your current window. Brilliant!

(Via Travis Prinzi via Twitter.)

You gotta feel for the one dude in the front row

2008-05-04T07:39:00.002-04:00

Curious about why Apple's stock is so high (both literally and figuratively)? Look no further than this photo.

Course, these kiddies are all followers. I had one, like, five years ago.